


Gwyn of Haryse

by idlecuriosity



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Medical Trauma, Swearing, biromantic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2018-12-09 12:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 120,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11668719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlecuriosity/pseuds/idlecuriosity
Summary: Gwyn loses her family and memory in a shipwreck. Everyone seems to think it's a miracle she survived. but what exactly provided that miracle?This is set in the next generation after Kelandry's books.I've pre-written a ton for this. so i'm slowly adding chapters here.





	1. In which a lone survivor gets a name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cast:  
> Gwydian of Haryse/ Amaley, Grenal Burkin, Tullim, Duke Baird of Queenscove,

One  
In Which: our hero is a lone survivor and gets a name

Annoyed at the grating bird calls and laying on some hot coals and nettles, she tried to readjust. The coals got hotter and shards of glass scraped down her right leg and into her right shoulder. A snapping turtle inside her ribs was heavy and clamped down hard on her diaphragm. She opened her mouth to cuss and groan in pain but all that came out was a wheeze. As a last resort she cracked her eyes open to try to figure a way out of this terrible torture chamber.

  
It was a bare, bright room with white walls, wooden floor and ceiling. An open window let in the headache inducing noise of a flock of birds and some low murmurs of a busy street. The coals, nettles and glass she had felt were just white sheets and a white blanket on a thick mattress. Thick white bandages over her hands suggested why her bones felt like they were trying to fight each other, and why the muscles felt either like lead weights or on fire.

  
She rasped some more curse words. This time questioning instead of explicative.

  
On her right, the bedside table had a wooden cup and a ceramic pitcher. But she couldn't move her arms far enough to reach the edge of the bed, let alone lifting, bending and grasping the cup over here. The dead rat and desert sand in her mouth would just get to stay for now. Till she could muster up the strength to move. She coughed, and immediately regretted it. Swallowing was almost as bad, but at least it didn't disturb the vicious heavy pain in her ribs.

  
/Ok. so what doesn't hurt?/ She asked herself, /I can see out of both eyes, my ears work just fine or else I wouldn't want to set fire to that flock of feathered noise pollutants outside. Can I wiggle my toes? Yes. And that didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would. Five fingers on both hands, but those hurt brittley. I can smell.../ The stink of seaweed and fish and drowning and terror rushed towards her mind through her nose.

  
More pain rushed in to shore up the older, tireder aches that might have lost momentum without some fresh reserves, as her body tensed up and nausea threatened to drown her. Being locked up by a blanket made of lead over a body made of fire and bandages was just as scary as the smell of the sea. She couldn't do anything. Those fucking gulls were going to just keep jeering at each other while she drowned in her own terror vomit, safe in a nice hospital bed. Self disgust, outrage, and hatred for those thrice cursed birds fought against the panic and fear and weakness.

  
Her feet hit the floor and her bottom left the bed, then she was falling, but caught herself on the window sill. A whisper of a scream that was as loud as the comforter hitting the floor leaked out, lining her throat with threads of red hot wire.  
Hatred of the outside world and hatred of pain and disgust of the thought of getting this far just to collapse in a heap outside the hospital bed moved her hands. Those emotions were far more effective than her conscious decision to close the window. the cries of gulls and sounds of people outside muted to a relieving silence.

  
/Now…/, she puzzled, /now i'm stuck at the window. I don't' know if I can bear to get back in the bed. I don’t know if I can balance on my feet. But if I can balance on my feet, they hurt less than my back does. So this is probably a good thing./  
At least now the cup and water were near by.

  
She rested her head against the window to balance herself and free up her hands for the arduous puzzle of how to get the water from the pitcher to the cup, and how to get that whole thing to her mouth. She felt exhausted even trying to think the steps out, so she looked out the window to try to get some bearings instead.

  
She was a dazzled by the onslaught of sunlight. She hadn't realized her rooms lamp wasn't lit. Thankfully, there wasn't any expanse of water lying out to the horizon. There were lots of white stucco? Plaster? She wasn't sure of the right word for those textured white walls. The reddish clay roofs that made a charming contrast. She was up high and most of what she saw were roofs out in the distance. Below the window, there were some people working in a garden. Working to load soil or manure off of a wagon while some others chatted over lines of small plants.

  
The high sun cast sharp, but small shadows, and the people who didn't have hats shaded their eyes out of habit. Nobody looked up to see her. She was thankful for that. Her frame didn’t fit in the light weight white shift that felt like it was made of straw. The garment seemed specially trained to catch at every bit of skin it could find.. Despite the sun, she felt cold without the blankets, and the window under her forehead was refreshingly cool. The cold helped her steel her resolve to get some of that water.

  
She was pretty sure she couldn't manage to lift the pitcher without spilling it everywhere, so worked on trying to pick up the cup and dip it into the water. Her hands quaked, and shook, and the cup felt like it must weigh 10 pounds. She managed to lift it though, and lower it into the water the pitcher held. And then fucking dropped it into the water. She mouthed curse words cause talking hurt too much, she rested against the window again, trying to gather up strength. Focusing on her arms and hands to move them didn't work, so instead she focused on her anger and hatred, and that got her left hand inside the pitcher to try to grab onto the cup. Her grip was weak, and the cup was so heavy sunken underwater. Like a shoe filling up with water and dragging her down. Before she knew it, the pitcher shattered on the floor, spilling water. The treacherous fucking cup, and a field of dangerous shards of pottery to cut up her feet; the one last part of her that didn't hurt.  
The door to her right opened, and a towering fellow with olive skin and a goofy looking white and yellow costume came inside.

  
“Mithros and the Goddess, you're awake!” he goggled at her with wide set hazel eyes, “How were you able to get out of bed? No, nevermind, don't you move, I’ll get you back in. Dear child we were all so worried about you!” His brown, calf high leather boots crunched and slushed over the mess she had made and he stooped down to pick her up.

  
She hissed and mouthed curse words at all the extra pressure his hands and then the pressure from the bed transformed it into hot coals and shards of glass. He murmured apologies, and reassurances, but stopped when she bared her teeth at him and rasped,

  
“shut the fuck up. Go the fuck away.”

  
He seemed surprised at her venom, poor helpful lamb, but she was beyond caring.  
She only just blinked and he was back, along with an older lady, also towering huge, whose costume was yellow with white. The helpful lamb raised a cup to her lips so she could drink.It tasted awful, like bad memories and slime. But it didn't feel like there was a dead rodent on her tongue any more; the desert in her throat was still there though.  
When she finished, the matron quietly suggested he get more and have someone clean up the pitcher before turning to her with curious brown eyes.

  
“Goddess bless us, we weren't expecting you to recover so quickly, otherwise an orderly would have been in your room. My apologies for the oversight. I am Grenal Burkin, the healer in charge of this hospital. I understand if you would like to rest more child, your injuries certainly will need more of that before the next healing session. But if you feel willing, I would like to ask you some questions, and answer any questions you might have.”

  
She lowered her brows, earning a small twinge of pain from one of them and a cheek,  
“Child?”

  
she wanted to demand why they kept calling her that, if it was supposed to be funny since they were so much taller than her, or if it was some religion thing to do with this goddess entity, but her lungs coudn't keep up with the demand. Instead,she just instilled the word with as much derision and contempt she could muster.

  
The warmly olive and delicately featured face of this healer woman frowned in confusion. “yes, ch- yes, my dear. At least, you seem to all our methods of figuring to be about nine years old. Though we haven't been able to determine your age exactly. I don’t mean to suggest I am your mother.”

  
Nine? What? She thought she was whole, not still growing. she looked down at her chest, and found it flat. And remembered how large the pitcher had seemed, and how awkward closing the window had been. Maybe I am young? And these people aren't just some odd sort of giant, but fully grown. Why did I assume I was fully grown? Wait, how do I even know if i'm a girl that is supposed to have a bosom like this Grenal? Who the fuck am I?

"who?”

  
Was the only syllable that she was able to sneak out past her throat.

  
The orderly came back in with another cup, and went to help her drink that one down as well. Her throat still felt dry, but not like it was filled with sand anymore. Grenal took a breath as if to steady herself

  
“Truthfully, we aren't sure who you are exactly. You were the only survivor the sailors were able to rescue off of the boat. I'm not surprised by your lack of memory as you did suffer trauma to your head. The rest of the healers and I are hopeful that you will regain it in time.”

  
Amnesia. Fuck. How annoying. Didn't these rescuers find clothing or any identifying possessions on her? She tried to ask about this

  
“where are...” her mouth went dry and ‘my things’ came out in a croak.

  
“you're at the Sunlight Hospital in Port Caynne.”

  
She felt so frustrated. That wasn’t her damn question! The look of frustration on her face prompted the healer to continue  
“It's a city by the Emerald Ocean in the kingdom of Tortall.”

  
Who the fuck knew what an emerald ocean was, but Tortall... that was almost familiar.

  
She lifted her hand to the half full cup the orderly still held, and he helped her drink some more. Hopefully the fresh moisture will help her get out a sentence this time

  
“If this is a kingdom, who is king?” her throat protested this abuse, but she was proud of voicing a complete thought.

  
“King Jonathan, and his Queen, Thyete are the rulers.”

  
Recognition felt like a bucket of wet sand dumped on her head

  
“King Jonathan the fourth, Queen Thyete, Alanna the Lioness is the King's champion. the lady knight?” her voice broke after the first couple words, but she pushed the rest out in a desperate whisper.

  
Relief and shocked surprise filled up the healer's face

  
“Yes! Yes you remember! That's wonderful. This is remarkable progress indeed for your condition. It is the 45th year of Their Majesties' reign. The spring equinox, when your accident was, is a month past. We've been tending to you as much as we can since.”

  
That sounded like bullshit. A month of healing should have her up and walking just fine.

  
“Why do I still feel like shit?” spite got all the words out, though her throat still felt like acid.

  
“My dear, your injuries were... extensive. There was only so much healing your body could sustain while you were unconscious. Healing helps the body recover quicker, but it does depend a good deal on the physical reserves of the patient. Now that you're awake, we should be able to accelerate the progress, now that we can bolster your reserves with proper food and potions.”

  
She tried to lift a hand up to ease her headache. The muscles in her bicep and forearm protested, but she wasn't about to give up in front of these people. The hand made it to her brow and stayed there as she considered.

  
/A whole month, gone./ Well, since she couldn't really remember anything before that, she supposed it was just another month added to the tab. She could remember the King and the Lioness though. And the beautiful warrior queen. She knew the king had a deep blue gift, and the lioness had a purple gift to match her odd purple eyes. A fiery head of red hair and a temper to match. Her emblem was a gold lioness rampant on a red field, even though Trebond, her home fief, had a symbol of a tower. She didn't use the distaff shield standard of a double border that Keladry of Mindelan did though. And Kelandry incorporated her family symbol of an owl into her emblem, just adding her glaive to the design since it was her signature weapon.

  
She tested out this new knowledge on the healer, realizing the orderly fellow had gone again.  
“Kelandry? Lady knight?”

  
Again delight and surprise beamed out of the healer “Why yes, she was the second lady knight, do you remember anything of your family, or your home?”

  
Family and home didn't spark any such flood of knowledge. She coudn't even try to figure out how far away lady Kel and lady Alanna's homes might have been from her home. Since she knew Alanna was from Trebond and Kel from Mindonlan. Both places seemed equally fuzzy. She didn't even know where those places might fall on a map. Or where this port might either. Like she knew the words but not the forms. It was so frustrating.

  
She croaked,  
“A map?”

  
As the orderly came in, this time with a tray with a bowl and another cup. Another person, a young person with bright white skin and a mass of freckles came in after him with a broom and pan.

  
The bowl smelled like rotten onions, and she wrinkled her nose at it in disgust.

  
“Tullim, would you fetch her a map? Thank you for bringing lunch.”

  
Tullim nodded briskly with a rote 'Yes healer Grenel, right away' and left again.

  
“Now dear, the soup will have some herbs in it to help you sleep, so don't be surprised. We'll get you a map, and make sure someone is here for when you next wake up”

  
A frustrated grimace and a dull nod were all she could really manage. Her mind burned with retorts and lectures, but her lungs and throat couldn't seem to manage them just yet. The healer helped her with the cup, this one was warm and smelled of something that didn't stink: honey and peppermint. The aftertaste was bitter though, damn healing herbs.

  
She tried to manage the spoon herself, but it was too ungainly. It wouldn't stay flat and level, or move in a straight line. So she had to be spoon fed the vile watery soup. Finally she shoved the spoon away; she didn't think she could keep it down if she had to keep smelling it, and got some help with the rest of the sweet tea. She did feel better for the food though. Less like lead weights and burning pain mixed with sharp pain, and more like she was floating with twinges of discomfort

  
“I've almost forgot to ask with all the excitement,” came the healer's voice as large hands guided her back along the bed and raised up the cursed blankets over her chest again, “do you remember your name, lass?”

  
/name? Why would she have a name? Was she supposed to have a name? Names were for other people to have, surely./  
Grenal mistook her confused frown for one of concern, “It's alright my dear. We'll figure it out together. We're all just so happy you woke up. Rest well, we'll get you back to health in no time.”

 

\-----

  
She started to deeply hate beds and blankets. The way she sank into them, and the way the blankets would get tangled just echoed ‘trapped, you're trapped’. Baths were second worse, she hated feeling surrounded by water. Once she got well enough to stand up in the bathtub and raise a small bucket over her head to rinse off the soap that got better.

  
Tullim accepted all the venom she spat at him and gave her books and maps in return. They were offered with false smiles at first, and then finally honest worry and amusement. She devoured books on geography and history, the Immortals War when humans had opened the boundary into the divine worlds and let out a slew of different creatures and magical entities were tantalizingly familiar. Reading gave her tense, tight headaches right behind her eyes, but it was worth it.

  
Grenal, head healer in charge, kept asking about the ship sinking and who she might be. There were a couple option, it seemed. The roster from Port Legann finally had come in. Of the dozen children aboard The Nimble for the trip up north to Port Caynne, 4 were girls, and only two of those weren't from a Bazier tribe. That left her identity between Amaley, daughter of Tis the washerwoman and Virolar the smith; or Gwydian of Haryse, only child of Duke Martin the second of Haryse of and Duchess Airein of Goldenlake.

  
She had no idea. None of those names were similar. The area of Fief Haryse and the area of Port Legann had been pointed out to her on maps. None of the places there seemed familiar either. She would have been happy to just flip a coin and decide that way which girl she should be. The only trouble was trying to get someone to vouch for her identity either way. The nobles didn't want to accidently claim some commoner, and the commoners didn't have the funds for a trip to Port Caynne just to see if their friends’ kid might be in a hospital. Duke Martin seemed to have been fairly private about his home life and plans. No one had known he was even coming to his town home in the capital city of Corus till they had found his body in the bay.

  
There were a few unhelpful visitors, who came in in somber black and grays with flowers and sympathies. They were easy to run off with her still rasping voice that cracked and dropped out of use. None of them were close enough to the privacy seeking Duke Martin or Duchess Airein to know who she was for sure. They were just hedging bets and pushing their mourning and feelings onto her. The flowers they left were used as bookmarks.

An old skeletal fellow with deep, knowing green eyes and papery white skin came in after lunch on a hot muggy day. It was made extra muggy since she insisted on leaving the window shut to cut down on the noise of the harbor. He wasn't wearing funeral clothes, so that at least was a relief. Too many visitors wanted to use her as a touchstone for the people they had lost. They wanted to have the dead talk through her, like some medium. He moved the rooms only chair over to her where she sat at the foot of the bed.

  
His voice was like his eyes, deep and full.

  
“Hello, I'm Duke Baird of Queenscove. I'm the Chief Royal Healer. Grenal wrote me about your condition. I'd like to talk to you about it personally, if that's alright.”

  
She blinked at him, and tilted her head to consider him closer. Healers didn’t ask for her permission.. They treated her for her own good and even swearing at them didn’t fend off the prods and awful tasting potions. This healer had on practical clothes of breeches and shirt in slate blue with leaf green embroidery. The embroidery on his clothing caught her eye, some of the flowers seemed odd, like there were words underneath them somehow. His beard and hair were very white and equally wispy. She wanted to know more about the one adult that had actually asked her for her input and agreement, not deciding for her and then trying to convince her to go along with them.

  
Instead of answering him right out, she tested her recent learning

“Queenscove is north of here, south of Blue Harbor. Very old, does shipping but mostly produces dyes, wheat, cattle in the hills, and used to do pony breeding, but has been working more on producing flax for linen to dye” with a pause, she delved into shakier territory in her knowledge, “Uh, Sir Nealan was yearmates with Sir Kelandry. He has a green gift. And was squire for Sir Lady Alanna. he... married a Yamani Lady?”

  
This healer-duke eyed the stacks of books that had invaded the bedside table and the floor around it.

  
“Yes indeed. I also have two grandchildren by my son and Lady Yukimi. You've found some excellent texts on the fiefs and nobles of the realm, it seems.”

  
She nodded, the long winded explanation had tapped out her voice more than she wanted to admit. In the silence, he asked if she would like some tea, and she nodded.

  
“No drugs. I don't want to sleep.” it was another test. Healers were always harping on her to sleep more and snuck in sleeping drugs in everything it seemed.

  
“Yes I agree. I'd like to keep you conscious for this diagnostic, I mean, to see how you're doing.”

  
“I know what diagnostic is. I've been cooped up in this fucking hospital as long as I can remember.” she growled in reply.  
Silence reigned and held a stiff necked court till the tea arrived.

  
The tea was heavy with honey, and there wasn't even a bitter taste of willow bark under the mossy taste of green tea. She sipped happily. Her arms wanted to shake from the weight of the cup, so she propped her elbows and wrists on her legs.  
Baird tried again,

  
“How have you found your treatments here?”

  
“Annoying. My fractured leg is fixed, three broken ribs repaired, the rotator cuff in my shoulder fixed, and all the effects of drowning and malnutrition taken care of. But I still get headaches. My voice still hurts. And my hands still shake. I feel boxed in and they won't let me go out since I might fucking forget where the hospital is. They keep asking me about the stupid boat. The stupid voyage, or what my childhood was. But I don't know. They can't accept that my amnesia isn't better. Lots seem to think i'm faking and they can catch me in a trap. ‘Cause I know Alanna the Lioness gets seasick, but I don't know if my home was in a fief manor or a small house by a smithy.”

  
Her lungs ached from a second speech in an hour, but she didn't care. Working through pain was the only thing that got anything done.

  
He nodded over his tea and digested all this.

  
“You mentioned Sir Kel before too. You remember things about the lady knights of the realm? Did you hear about my granddaughter, Tieren, entering page service last year?”

  
“A girl page?”

  
Unfamiliar excitement gripped her. She continued in a rush, “last year? Did she need probation? Did she -”  
her voice caught and cracked

  
“It's all right,” he comforted her flareup of frustration, “she was not under probation, no. and she passed the first year exams with flying colors.” his green eyes seemed to glow with pride.

  
“I want to be a knight” her whisper surprised herself as the tiny dream escaped out into the open air.

  
“I want to be the noble’s daughter, so can become a knight. But they won't let me. Cause I might be a commoner instead. And that fief is struggling, because they don't know if there's even a line of nobles to continue ruling there, or if some distant cousins should start fighting to claim it and the title of duke. I don't know who Gwydian is anymore than I know who Amaley is. I'm the only witness and I don't remember anything. I just know I hate the ocean. And the gulls, and being stuck here.”  
Damn this kindly old grandpa. Damn him cause he was around to see one of her walls crumble down. She nearly punched her nose in an effort to quickly raise a hand to her eyes.

  
“Figuring out your identity is part of why I am here. Blood calls to blood; that's a rule of magic. I'm also here to ask if you'd like to be tested for the Gift, and more importantly, see if I can help you with your health complaints. Politics is not my main concern. But I would like to help you as much as I can.”

  
She finished the rest of her tea with a sigh.

  
“Fine. Let's get to it then. Do you need to draw blood or anything?”

\-----------------------

The examination was simple. He rested a hand that glowed a strong and healthy green on her forehead, and she felt like the inside of her skin and her bones had rain sheeting down them. The rain seemed to collect in her eyes, throat, back of her neck down her spine, gloved her hands, and just above her hip on her right side.

  
He produced a slate and chalk, and noted down some things, then produced a lock of hair tied in a indigo ribbon. The hair glimmered green, the ribbon untied itself, and the hair floated in place as he took his hand away. Then most of the hair went quickly to stick to his forehead, while a strand lazily ambled to settle on her forehead, and the rest fell to the ground. He held up the ribbon then, and the hair retraced its journey back up and over to form into a lock again, which he tied carefully.  
Another note went onto the slate.

  
His calm voice distracted her from her mental cascade of questions about what that had meant to test, and how the test worked exactly.

  
“Would you like to be tested for the Gift now?”

  
She shrugged. Hiding a cat's worth of curiosity.

  
“That's fine. I guess.”

  
Under his shirt on a leather throng was a clear quartz crystal point. He untied it from the leather and handed it to her.  
“Please hold cupped in both your hands. I'm going to put my hands under yours and see if I can guide you to make the stone glow. I want you to focus on your breathing, and focus on the stone. Try to ignore anything else in the room, even me. Just the stone, and your breathing.”

  
That task was not very easy. His hands were large and his fingers spidery long. Hers seemed dwarfed in his palms and again she felt resentment for being so small. Or for all the adults for being so large. When the crystal started to glow the same green the hair had before, she started to focus on it. Her breathing was harder to think about as it didn't always do what it was supposed to. Inhales hitched, exhales wheezed, but the crystal was very interesting.There were flaws that had been invisible before it started glowing that caught the green light and amplified it.

  
The green light drained out slowly and then filled back up. Like a lightning bug blinking in the night, but much slower, and more predictably. It was comforting: measured, and beautiful.

  
She synced her breath up to how the light flowed in and out, it seemed natural, and didn't strain her lungs like trying to take full deep breaths had done. After she got used to the rhythm, the light was slow in returning to the crystal. She frowned, and tried to urge it back into it's cycle. The light kept on occasionally faltering and she tried to will it into continue to keep its steady blink. The light made it easy to see all the little details about the inside of the crystal. She liked seeing those interesting bends and cracks.

  
The light changed a little, from green to having little flecks of purple and blue. Those made it easier to see how the crystal had formed. She could tell which point was the natural growth pattern of the crystal and which had been hand cut to create symmetry along it's length. A thread of sunset pink glowed along with the dusky blue and twilight purple the next cycle, and she was pretty sure she could hit the crystal just there, on one of the sides, and it would crack clean into two pieces. There wasn't any hint of green in the crystal anymore, but she didn't notice the change. She was far too interested in seeing all the little details of this stone.

  
Baird’s huge hands and the room and the ever present muffled cries of gulls fell away till she knew everything there was to know about this crystal. She tried to keep the glow going longer than it had been, reaching to learn more about it. It had been grown as part of a cluster. Maybe she could find more of it?

++++

  
Duke Baird had done quite a few tests of young one's gifts in the past. It was part of being a mage, to help children discover if they had it, and to help guide them in learning how to control the magic inside them. He had heard of Numair, the most powerful sorcerer in the realm, talk about a child he had met with a tri-colored gift before. But this was the first time Baird had seen such a thing. Numair himself had a dual colored Gift, but even that was rare. The test to see how strongly this child was connected to his wife, Willina of Haryse, hadn't been very conclusive. However, the hint of blue in this girl's gift was a stronger hint to her ties to his sister in law, Roxanne of Haryse. She had had a sky blue gift, and there was a tendency of magical blood lines to have similar shades of the same hue. His own son had a green gift like his own, but Neal's was a darker green; more emerald than his own summer grass green.

  
A hint of light at the edge of his vision caught his attention. Specks in the clay pitcher and bowl on the dresser and the stone windowsill, as well as a small vase on a shelf had started to glow in the same colorful sunset hues of blue, pinkish red, and purple. The glows faded, and then brightened again along with the crystal the girl held in her hand. She was getting the other quartz crystals in the room to glow along with his. He hadn't heard of this happening in a test for the Gift. Numair would definitely be interested now.

  
He removed one hand from under her cupped palms, and placed it over the crystal to block her line of sight with it, murmuring a calming

  
“Very well done. I'd call this test a success.”

++++++++

She started, and came flooding back to herself. That had been so interesting. She had felt little bits of crystal matrix all over once she had gone looking for it. Tiny specs were in the clay and glaze of the pottery, and the vase she had thought was glass above where her borrowed hospital clothes hung was actually solid crystal. The flagstones out in the garden paths had been riddled with quartz too. She'd need to get some books on minerals and stones.

  
“You would? Oh good. I think I learned a lot. That vase is too valuable to be stuck in a patient's room. It is carved crystal..”  
“Well I meant more that you certainly do have the Gift. Magic. It's a powerful tool if you use it right. I can walk you through some exercises so you can better learn how to contact it. If you don't, it might come out of control during stressful situations. You seem to have a great talent for it, as quickly as you took control over lighting up the crystal.”

  
She nodded and murmured “Alright. I'd like that I think. And some books about it too? I've been trying to catch up on background about the world and the realm, I didn't think to read about the Gift itself. Who is it a gift from, anyway?”

  
“Most agree it's from the gods, but I'm sure the books I can give to you will go into more depth about it.”

  
Gwyn snorted dismissively when he mentioned gods. What a ridiculous idea that those entities would give people magic but still allow devastating things like war and shipwrecks. She wasn’t going to insult this man’s ideas if he was going to offer her books though.

  
“Books you'll give to me? Woah, I don't expect you to lend me them yourself, the orderlies here have been getting me books from traders and the few libraries that are around. I didn't expect anything from you. Biard. Uh, I mean, your grace?”

  
She winced as her voice cracked into a whisper on the last word when she raised her tone to ask.

  
“Nonsense. Like I mentioned before, my wife is from the Haryse line, and she'd be disappointed if I didn't offer you what I could. Afterall, I'm as convinced as I think I can be that you are her grand niece.”

  
She narrowed her eyes at this old skinny man. He was smiling genially, patiently. For her to work out what he had just said and what it all meant.

  
“You mean to say I'm of the Haryse line too. A noble.”

  
As his head bobbed in confirmation and he opened his mouth to elaborate, she continued in a menacing rasp,

  
“How sure are you? Or are you going with the idea that someone as blue blooded as you wouldn't have spent time on a commoner, and that someone talented with the gift would be wasted on an orphan daughter of a washerwoman? Or that my fixation about lady knights was because I wanted to follow in their footsteps and not just idle hero worship? Just how desperate is House Haryse to continue their line anyway, that they'd risk claiming someone unknown into their ranks?”

  
She could feel the bile of doubt and self pity burning the back of her throat. She knew that she didn't trust nobles as far as she could see them. Was that from too much familiarity and backstage pass to their in-fighting, or was it from being taken for granted and looked down upon as middle class? Her headache joined the burning in her throat in a bitter harmony, spider webbing up from the back of her neck over her skull. The force of her glare seemed to push the brittle duke back in his chair, his hands clasped over a knee as he studied her back.

  
“My wife's house is not so desperate. Though there was some hope of the trade agreements that would come between Haryse and Goldenlake because of your parent's marriage. My confidence comes from the cleft of your chin, and the blue in your gift. These traits were shared by your grandmother Roxanne of Haryse. And the curl and auburn tint of your hair could come from your grandfather Martin Senior of Meron. There was some speculation this winter about why your parents had opened up their town house. The conservatives dreaded while the progressives hoped that they would intreat the throne to have you considered for page work.”

  
He sounded reasonable. And he was offering a huge carrot. Gwyn couldn’t get over the acidic doubt,

  
“What if you're wrong. And in 8 years I get an unveiling worse than Squire Alan's ever was. What if instead of learning that Alan is a girl, they learn that squire Gwydian is actually a commoner. Am I tried and sentenced to fraud? How about you? All your evidence is, there's a term for it. It's circumstantial evidence. I have three colors of gift, they could have come from anywhere. Cleft chins are common enough in Tortall, two orderlies have them. So is red hair, especially up north.”

  
Whispered words were accented by her finger stabbing down on her leg.

  
He lifted a cool hand, a calming and placating gesture, but she was anything but.  
“you are obviously well educated-”

  
“So I must be a noble, cause only nobles are smart?” the creaking and croaking voice made the question more sarcastic than she could have hoped

  
“Of course not. All citizens of Tortall are mandated to be educated in reading, writing and math. There are plenty of schools now that offer even more. But circumstantial evidence and your insistence to poke through every hole and drive every concern of yours into the ground, that shows familiarity with how magistrates work, which your late father was one. A very good one, might I add. Even though you can't remember the lessons or where you caught the ideas doesn't mean they haven't been set deep into your mind. Just like your knowledge of the lady knights has been set deep.

  
“you can deny my conclusions. I will still pay your hospital bills and settle any accounts that have been opened from you. I will still help heal you as I am able if you wish. I can help you get settled back in the town of Ravenwood by Pirate's Swoop. You can go live a commoner's life. Probably live a great one if you hone your Gift and your intellect. But I don't think I am doing the realm, crown, myself or you a disservice by naming you the daughter of Martin the second of Haryse.

  
“However, the decision is up to you. As sure as I am that you are Gwydian, I think you've been through enough uproar to your normal life that you can decide from here. I won't force it on you.”

  
Her mind churned with the implications. She was free to make the choices she wanted. She knew she'd feel the guilt of both lost girls either way she chose. But one path lead to knighthood.

  
She shakily emptied the rest of the teapot into her cup, and drank.

  
She imagined a box inside herself opposite her heart.Inside that box she pushed the fear of being found lying to the crown, shaming this old man's judgement. Then she gently laid the fragile ghost of a commoner girl that might have dreamed over hero stories while her father's smith hammer beat out a rhythm. Gwydian of Haryse closed the box up tight and met the duke’s eyes,

  
“I want to live in the town house you said my parents had opened in Corus. I'll need a steward for the home fief, a tutor, and someone to help train me physically so I can start page training and not just be left in the dust. And if your grace can help any with my voice so it stops giving out like this, that would be the most useful.”


	2. A Great and Terrible Midwinter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which our Hero does some Slice of Life, and is Late to a Banquet. 
> 
>  Hey i'm new to AoO, and i dunno how to tag a chapter with separate tags. but:  
> CW dead body, CW broken bones, CW self harm,
> 
> Cast  
> Gwyn, Beatrix 'Bexy', Corel, Natalie, Miss Sokera, Master Stefain, Orange Cat, High Priest Loth, Sabeen Ibn Zurhud, Duke Baird, Dirgette

Sunlight in Gwyndian's eyes woke her up. With a noise of protest, she rose up onto her elbows. The thin yamani style futon mattress was chilly in the winter, but Gwyn still preferred cold to beds that seemed like they could drown a person. 

“Good morning, my lady,” chimed Bexy, still tying the drapes to the side of the window overlooking the street.

“sure sure” Gwyn’s reply was half lost in a yawn. She stretched and reached to the corner where two walls met the floor by her head and found her glasses, and looped the loose wires behind her ears to secure the round lenses to her face.  
She rolled over to leave the pad and small pillow behind. She wore a thick woolen robe so she didn't have to fight clinging and trapping blankets.

Once on her stomach, she lifted her torso off the floor, and straightened out her legs to hold herself on just toes and hands in a straight line. Familiar muscle complaints were categorized as she held the posture. The small hoop earrings that were decorated with small citrines and garnets shook as her belly and legs worked to keep her ankles, knees, hips, shoulders and neck in a straight line.Gwyn waited till breathing came in gasps, and then counted 3 gasps before she let her knees come down and rested. The cold floor was making her hands feel numb, so she decided to go for pull ups and dips instead of press ups to strengthen her arms today.

Bexy had stored the futon and pillow back up in their drawer and was now pouring tea into a delicate cup on the desk in the study that she slept in. The proper bedroom had been relieved of the four poster monstrosity of a bed and turned into her mage workroom.

Gwyn watched the familiar arrangement unfold as she worked at her exercises, “Thanks Beatrix”

“You work hard, you hear? Page training starts in 16 weeks”  
Gwyn grinned in pleasure at the familiar encouragement. The weeks were whittling down to nothing fast.

Last spring, a year after waking up at the hospital, she had argued and terrorized the house about being allowed to join in Page training. 

Corel, the head of her security and trainer in physical matters, had argued far louder and more sensibly that she could barely complete one hour of weapons training with him, so how could she possibly cope with having 5 hours at the palace. Gwyn had impatiently and ferociously worked through another year, eating up every scrap of news about lady page Tieren of Queenscove, and even more astonishing lady page: Ermengarde of Tirragen. Lady Ermengarde’s father, the duke of Tirragen was a noted conservative. Then again, House Tirragen had 5 daughters, and all 3 of the sons had become knights before Ermengarde. 

When she learned about Ermengarde had started page training, Gwyn had moaned and groaned about losing the opportunity of having another girl as a year mate in her training. Still, she couldn't deny Corel's assessment of her abilities after only one year of recovery. Then she funneled all her regret and dissatisfaction at pushing her body past its limits again and again.

While Bexy cleaned out the two fireplaces, one was shared between the study and the front receiving room, while the other was in her workroom, Gwyn jumped up to grab the wooden rod hung from the ceiling and started pulling her chin up to the rod.  
Feeling her muscles work, and remembering how just hanging with bent elbows had taxed her this time last year got her smiling. Gwyn adored the feeling of strength within herself. 

She still could only muster up five, six on a good day like today, but she comforted herself in knowing that she was also heavier than she was last winter. She had gained a handspan of height, and had gained a good bit of muscle mass. 

She dropped down and went to a chair to put her hands on the seat behind her back, lower her rump to the floor and then press her hands into the chair seat to raise herself back up off the floor till her hands were straight. Shoulders and the backs of her arms complained, but she just smiled again. 16 weeks. Only 16 weeks till she was a page. 

By the time she had done her morning exercises 3 times through, she was ready for the tea, toast, eggs, and fruit Bexy had brought up when waking her. Bexy had finished the morning tidying and had left to do some market shopping and to pick up her Lady Heryse's dress for the midwinter festivities in two weeks.

Gwyn changed from her sleeping robe to her practice clothes of grey britches and a black shirt. They were let over from her huge mourning wardrobe she had worn for the past year. This midwinter would officially break mourning for her, and her wardrobe in preparation for that was steadily growing.

She ducked into her workroom to select a silver necklace with a small opal in a pendant. It was barely bigger than her fingernail all together. But she liked opals even better than she liked quartz. Not just cause the beautiful colors, but the sheer magical potential in opals made them a boon to her magical studies. 

Out her suite's door into the main upper hall, she vaulted neatly over the stair banister, turned and grabbed the floor she had just left. She was glad to have warmed up her back muscles when they easily caught her and she could shift her momentum using her legs to aim for the landing a story below where she had just been standing.

As her house slippers hit the floor, she coiled into a roll that spread out the impact, and sprang back onto her feet with long practice. She saw Coral was talking to Natalie, the gardener and cook, by the garden's decorative glass door, but looked over at Gwyn's entrance.

“16 weeks, lady” Natalie encouraged with a wave, and Coral gestured for his trainee to follow him outside. Gwyn waved and grinned back to Natilie and trotted after Coral.

Outside the two started a run that took them out of the unicorn district, down to the river Olorun and then west, up Palace Way and then further west to the Temple District. It was the normal route, one that would have been boring, but she focused her mind on doing sprints to one street crossing, lightly jogging to the next street crossing, and then sprinting again. Corel's long legs and barrel chest holding gallons of lungs kept up with her easy. He'd encourage her to go even faster with the sprints by breaking ahead and singing taunts till she could catch up.

The temple district was beautiful with a light dusting of snow. It made the temple to the Goddess look ethereal, further gilded the golden temple to Mithros, and served sharp contrast to the temple of the Black God, making every spine of that roof look sharper.

She stopped along Temple Way outside the Black God’s stark white and black temple to catch her breath and shake out aching legs. Running always hurt. It wasn't that she wasn't in shape, or the cold air burning her lungs, but an intrinsic fact to the act, she supposed. Running hurt. Water was wet.

“Stretch. The cold will lock you up fast.” was Corel's terse advice. When he wasn't taunting or scolding her to do better, he treated words like gold marks.

She touched toes, caught her ankle with a hand behind her hip, and crouched to stretch each leg out to the side before she slicked her short hair back, rearranged her necklace and earrings, and strode confidently into the temple. Corel was well used to this schedule. He was already heading away from the stark temple she entered. 

The god of death was depicted as a hooded figure, shrouded in black. People said he was kindly to the recently dead, and acted as psychopomp to the souls by seeing them to the Peaceful Realms for them to rest. He offered peace to even the most vile, since death was inevitable to all humans. Judgement was reserved for Mithros. 

Small candles burned in colorful glass vials in large arrays, like the flames were actually people seated in an amphitheater to watch the worshipers or mourners act in a large play. She went to a bank that was mostly unlight, and took a taper from the holder at the edge closest to her.

Bowing her head in supposed prayer, she meditated on how cruelly democratic this god was in this feudal kingdom. Once again she mentally demanded to know if death was supposed to be the punishment it seemed to be, and what those fifty seven people on the ship with her had deserved to be so punished. It doesn't matter if now they were resting in the summer fields, never feeling hungry or tired or scared. Even if the dead were comforted, there was emptiness for the living. All those people who had visited her at Sunshine Hospital. Her memories. The eyes of her family's steward that had loved her parents loyally. They were all so unfairly empty. 

She let the old anger and hurt fill her up, meditated on it. Nursed it and polished it. Then lit the taper from the central pillar candle on this bank of small candles, and lit five. One for each of her possible parents, and one for the other self she could have been. Duke and Duchess of Haryse, a blacksmith, a washerwoman, and a girl. 

Once they were lit, she was empty of that hurt and anger. It was a sweet relief after all the tension she had held inside.

She sat on the pew, facing the altar where bodies were lain during funerals, and thought of all the death and destruction she might have to do as a knight. She fiddled with the earrings she had made in the colors that pages wore, gold and red, and resolved for the 77th time to kill as little as possible. To try to spare even her most hated enemies' lives. She wasn't sure if she could plausibly do that. But then wondered if there was any one human she could possibly hate more than the Black God.

With a long breath full of cedar incense smoke, she stood again, bowed toward the altar with the respect she could muster, and head back to the back of the chapel.

At the back, a small side door lead downstairs into the cool room. Monks lifted their heads as she came in the second door at the bottom of the stairs, nodded with familiarity, and went back to their copying or other work.

She recognized Master Loth at one of the marble slabs used for preparing bodies for funeral. A figure lay under a black sheet while the head monk wrote in a thick bound book.

“young Gwyndian. Hello again.” his voice was flutey and hushed. Along with his tall stature, he always struck her as like a wind flute turned into a person. 

“Hello Master Loth. Would you like any assistance?” 

Used to her strange morbidness, he nodded. Then gestured to indicate the tall cabinet that held oiled smocks, magically treated masks, and oiled leather gloves, and other tools used for this sort of preparation. 

First she hit up the pump and basin installed in the room to wash her hands with strong lye soap, and smeared a little under her nose to block any other odor that will come along. Black sheets over bodies in this room meant they hadn't been cleaned yet, so any indignity was covered and masked. With clean hands she went to the cabinet and picked out the smallest of the coverings, and the rest of the tools she would need. Long practice with this room had taught her it was best to get everything at this stage instead of having to make multiple trips, washing up each time she had to come back to this cabinet.

Next came the task of washing the body. This was done in silence as everything from hair to toes, back and front were carefully wiped clean. This person seemed to have had a farm accident, and she spent special care at the wound sights to rinse them out.

She and Loth worked companionably, there wasn't a body to prepare every time she visited. But it was often enough that she knew what he might need when he needed it.; which tasks she could take care of on her own, and how to take care of them.

After the body was cleaned, they started to dress and arrange him, and now she broke the silence to ask who he had been, who he had left behind, and speculate with the priest about the daily life he must have lead.

“He's got more calluses on his left finger tips than on his right fingers, but more muscle and scars on his right hand. So he was probably right handed, but played an instrument.” she hypothesized. Gwyn’s voice still had a soft rasp that hung around after Duke Baird's healings. It seemed to fit in this place better than it fit anywhere else she had been.

“His daughter had mentioned he was teaching her how to fiddle.” Master Loth agreed with a nod.

A tattoo she had spotted on his back told of service in the navy for a time, and a pale band around his ring finger told of marriage, and long hours in the sun. broken teeth and scars on knuckles told tales of courage, but swollen knees and ankles hinted it was a drunken courage, or maybe just gout.

She liked this part, how someone can explain their lives without even being present or writing anything down. Treating the dead with respect also dissolved some of her guilt about hating the god of the dead. She knew one day she'd meet that hooded figure herself. And once again he'd decide what sort of situation she would find herself in.

After the dressing and arranging were complete, she went over to another cabinet where used coverings were set to be washed, and a special bottle of magic oil was held. She lightly coated everything that hadn't been covered by the smock, gloves and mask with the oil and covered her nostrils with it to clear her lungs of anything that might have been breathed in while working on the body.

“Thank you for your time, Master Loth” she bowed to the quiet monk she considered a friend.

With a wave at the other monks, she headed back upstairs, smelling faintly of secret spices and lye. Then headed outside.

===

Corel would be in the temple of Mithros, god of the sun, law, and warriors.  
It was much brighter inside than the Black God's temple. Mirrors of bronze and copper shone behind every candle and hung from the chandeliers to multiply light in here. There was also music, a drummer and flutist played a steady, but uplifting sounding piece. Catchy, and good to march to.

Corel knelt by the golden altar that was full of offerings and icons. Gwyn knew Mitrhos was the chief god of knights, warriors that upheld the law. However, she didn't trust this god of war either. He was the golden face that told the lie that dying in battle was somehow more glorious than dying anyway else. That killing people for your country was somehow justice. Never mind that those foreigners probably also prayed to him for victory. To Gwyn, it smacked of a small child playing with toy soldiers. That was hardly something a god should do, she thought. 

Corel placed a small wooden figure of a pony with a bow over it's detailed saddle, a token for his own daughter. She was a member of the Queen's Riders. Gwyn had only met Diergette a handful of times since her company of the Riders was often away to hunt bandits or immortals. She was a battle maiden Gwyn looked up to. 19 years old and a better shot than her father was with any ranged weapon, even thrown knives and javelins.

Prayers done, Corel unfolded back to standing and looked around.

Spotting her, he headed to the back of the temple.

Once they exited, he double checked

“All done?”

“For today” She nodded

“Devout little thing, aren't ya.”

“You have no idea” she answered with an ironic smile. If she hadn't talked to Numair and Daine about the gods, she wasn't sure she would believe the really existed. Daine had met them in person, quite a few of the major and minor gods, and was even the daughter of the god of the the hunt, and the new goddess of child birth up north. Gwyn hadn't told daine how learning that Daine's mother had become a goddess had cast new light on her doubts about the gods. Not that she wanted to tear down the temples and tell people who they should or should not worship. But when she let it, the question of what exactly made a god divine bothered her like a wiggling tooth.

“Race you home!” she declared with a shove at his middle to knock him off balance, and took off.

He charged after her and caught up when they met large road of Palace Way, but before he could pull away, she jumped to pounce on a waist high fence, and vault from there onto the roof of a shed with the momentum the run had given her. Leaning to counteract the slope of the shed, she launched off of the roof to grab and swing from a tree branch, pulling her legs up and shortening her arms to bring her chest closer to the branch, she shoved at the apex of her swing off the branch and hoped in her momentum and the mental map she had made of this area.

Yes, there we go, thick thatch caught her and she rolled uphill toward the spine of the roof. She scrabbled to her feet and then continued jumping roof to roof, using chimneys to balance and trees to gain altitude.

Shops and houses passed under her feet as she exalted in the feeling that must be close to flying. As she got to the more spread out and richer estates, she run along fences, crouched low to keep her center of gravity low and arms spread out to help balance.  
At her own family's gardens, she swarmed over the stone walls and hopped from window ledge to window ledge till she dove into her room, rolling to spread the impact out along her back.

Gasping for breath, she looked up to find Corel standing in the doorway with fists on hips.  
“Damn it your fast.” she wheezed  
“People tend to move out of the way of a charging man.”  
“Touche”  
“Speaking of, it's weapons practice.”

Corel taught her knife, nightstick, hand to hand combat and wrestling. All things he had learned as a city guard before entering private work for her late father. Of all of them, wrestling made the most sense to her. She just couldn't quite get her weapons and blows to land in the most effective spot, any more than she could hit a target with a bow. With grappling, all she had to do was hold on and twist till she got her opponent's arm, leg, wrist or throat just the way she wanted it. He taught her how to use their size difference for her, how to change his momentum to favor her. Instead of spending more energy to stop him still. She practiced long and hard to master how a glancing blow might be used to better place herself to grab an unrooted knee and lay a fighter out.

Covered in sweat that threatened to freeze off if she stopped working hard, she repeated knife work drills, and tried to beat the crap out of solid Corel or the straw dummies that took up a corner of the garden.

Before lunch of soup and bread, she washed up in her room. Washing up was it's own practice: this time in magic. She levitated buckets of water up to her room, then heated them with a whisper and by dropping a garnet chip into both. Next she stood in the tub, and carefully drew a wobbling sphere of water out of a bucket, maybe the size of two fists, and let it splash over her head. Another sphere of water splashed over her back, then one over the front, and the first bucket was mostly empty.

Lavender soap got the oil from the Black God's temple out of her hair and sweat off of everywhere else, then more wobbly blobs of water splashed over her to rinse her off. At the end, she was only standing in a little more than ankle deep water, and felt accomplished instead of ceremonially drowned in the name of cleanliness. Any container of water much bigger than a bucket still made her queasy. Gwyn could still get angry over how she couldn't remember anything before the hospital, except the panic and dread of drowning. 

After lunch, were lessons with her tutor. She was a mage from the royal university and had graduated the summer Gwyn came to Corus. The woman, Lyfee Sokera, was from the border of Tyra and had their drawling accent. Miss Sokera never seem surprised at what Gwyn knew or didn't know. So had gotten the very well paying job more experienced teachers. 

They talked about the texts that Gwyn had been assigned, and worked on penmanship. Everyday was a penmanship lesson, and every single one sucked. Duke Baird had helped many things, but her fine muscle control was still atrocious. A measured, even hand didn't even seem possible. Thanks to the lessons it was at least legible. Mostly. If she went slow. She copied out poems, and wrote essays about the history or current events. They talked about different rhetorical strategies in writing, and when to use what approach. Then they went over magic.

Gwyn had found she had a talent for metallurgy and mineral magic, as well as enchantment. She also liked to pick apart how spells were created with her tutor. Besides flying over the city going from building to building at a run, this was her favorite part of the day. She knew if she couldn't cut it as a page, she was going to study at the university. But being a mage and a knight was far more attractive than just being a university mage.

They wrapped up the day with math, which was a breeze until she had to write it down. Today Miss Sokera had her plan out a garden. How much of what kind of plant could fit. Trying to find an optimal layout for food production and harvest size. Each plant had a certain amount it could take up, so far more tomato plants could fit than heads of lettuce. As she went over the problem with her tutor, getting details and fielding concerns, Gwyn suspected they were actually building her tutor's own vegetable garden.

Once she had the layout built to fit the parameters, Miss Sokera had her price the lumber, fertilizer, trellises, and seeds this garden would require. Gwyn made her own notes about how much gold pieces her Midwinter gift should be for her tutor should be.

Supper was a simple roast and baked root vegetables. Gwyn, Corel, Bexy, and Natalie all had dinner together. Gwyn felt like these dinners were just as educational as her lessons. Bexy and Natalie would gossip about people they knew around the city, and Corel would chime in from time to time. 

After supper, Gwyn retired to her chambers for study. The moon came out over the city, and Bexy came in with tea and some sugar rolls and to ready the rooms for the night. She poked up the fire in the large hearth, banked the one in the workshop, and laid out the thin pad, small firm pillow, and thick robe that served as Gwyn's bed things. 

Gwyn stayed up, sipping tea, reading, and scribbling notes to herself at the desk till the moon was high, and the desk candles burned down low.

She finished the day with more exercises to build her strength. Balancing on one leg she lowered and raised herself like she was sitting in an imaginary chair, then held out weighted bags at shoulder height till her breath came in gasps and she thought her arms would just fall off. Then finished the exercises by lifting a weighted box up onto a shelf on her right, and down onto the floor over to her left again and again. The twist while lifting or lowering made all sorts of muscles complain. Gwyn grinned, showing her teeth in defiance of any weakness.

She went through those exercises twice more, each time till her form slipped or she thought she might hurt herself if she did it any longer.

Then dressed for bed and stretched out her muscles. One at a time, from neck to ankle, and then back through again.

Well after midnight, she finally let herself get ready for sleep. She closed her eyes and braced for any nightmares that might come tearing her way. They always did.  
\---------

 

One day was the same as any other. Though the temples changed. She stopped by the Goddess' temple instead of the Black God's. Here she didn’t clean and dress the dead, but did errands and cleaning for the priestesses. She liked helping the supplicants of the Goddess’s temple. Of any god, the Goddess seemed to look out for the disenfranchised. This was much closer to the work Gwyn wanted to do as a knight than the war games Mithros championed. 

Instead of racing Corel home, she met Bexy at the dressmaker's to be fitted for another court gown. She had manipulated with coin and sympathy wrenching tales to be able to order from Lalasa, the tallented seamstress who also made dresses for her majesty the Queen. More importantly to Gwyn, she had once been Kelandry of Mindolan's personal maid, and the two kept in touch. When Lalasa assured Gwyn that Kel was going to be coming to the capital for the winter to visit family. Gwyn could have flown for real back home.

That afternoon's lessons were on Yamani language and literature. If Common tongue's alphabet was hard to write, Yamani was even worse. It was so graceful looking on the page, even court documents looked elegant instead of brisk. But Gwyn's attempts at recreation looked more like splashes in a puddle. She could read and understand Yamini fairly well, and her pronunciation was fine, but all the tricks to syntax and grammar slipped around in her mind without concentrated, halting effort. Of course that made her sound like a bumbling idiot, and made her writing even clumsier. she stowed away all these failings and smiled toothily. She liked knowing where her failures and flaws were. It let her know where to hammer herself into shape.

Temples alternated with temples. Lessons alternated with lessons, and the weeks chiseled themselves away till it was midwinter at last.

\-------

It was too cold to snow, but that mean the river had frozen over hard enough to skate on. Vendors set up colorful stalls on the river itself, and there were ice sculpting competitions and snowman building contests.

Gwyn, well, no. Lady Gwyndian of Haryse, attended some of the festivities. Her Ladyship kept her feet solidly on the frozen ground and off the ice. Ice might be the kind, structured, crystalline cousin to her hated element of water, but she still didn't trust it. 

The first day of Midwinter festival, she came out in black alpaca wool and lavender-grey velvet, with little droplets of garnet and jet adorning her muff, cape and hat. Bexy attended as her maid, but they swung by where some of Bexy’s many cousins were selling cider and roasted nuts. 

Corel had taken the day to visit with his daughter, back in town the Riders, yet they kept bumping into the pair at the crowded riverside. She rubbed elbows with the other nobles, hearing about these bandits and those immortals causing trouble. What commoners were becoming too noisy, and which commoners refusing to pay taxes. Many rumors about romantic entanglements and who went to what dressmaker. The constant talk about who is wearing what style that doesn't go with whose skin tone. 

Gwyn listened closer to that last bit. Once she got out of mourning she didn't want people thinking she didn't know how to dress herself. But after a few more comments, she realized what the women had a problem with wasn't wearing the wrong color to set off one's skin tone, but rather the skin tone of the person in question. The group of nobles Gwyn had been eavesdropping on all kept sneaking looks at a Bazhir woman in a sugar sweet blue gown.

Gwyn arranged her own annoyingly dark clothing and made a point to go and exchange niceties with the young Bahzir woman, and compliment her on the dress. It actually set off her skin tone lovely. Cool and pastel to her warm, dark brown cheeks. She wore a matching headscarf over her hair and around her neck which also complimented the heart shape of her face. A veil was attached to the headscarf, but brushed back over her head and secured with a decorative jeweled pin. 

Gwyn finally remembered to introduce herself, and was rewarded with an introduction to Sabeen Ibn Zurhud,  
“My uncle is Qazim ibn Zirhud, the Captain of the King’s Own second company.” The young woman, probably 4 years older than Gwyn beamed with pride. Then she slightly turned and tucked her elbows close to herself as the wind picked up. 

“Have you been through many northern winters?” Gwyn asked, not sure if she was being presumptuous or just asking a normal question. 

“No, unfortunately. I thought I was so prepared too. The temperature at home drops very low, but this wind!”

Sabeen’s smile was lovely and self deprecating. Gwyn felt the earth under her feet slide a little, and quickly looked down to make sure she wasn't over the water by mistake.

She was steadied by the sight of firm stone under her boots, so she fished in her small bag tied to her sash.

“One moment, if you don't mind?”

She pulled out a garnet, wrapped in a bit of iron wire, and oiled lightly with lamp oil against rust.  
Garnet and iron and lamp oil all loved heat and fire. She focused on the pool of Gift inside her and sent a thread that glowed with her three colors. The thread was directed to weave, twist. and tie in, around, and through the small charm. She wove patterns and runes so the charm can be set to charge by daylight. Now for another thread, this one wove and spiraled around the charm and the existing thread of magic, connecting here and there in the way that would tell this charm of warmth to gather warmth from the sun as the charm was charged. One more thread woven around and in between to activate it; a fourth thread split and split again till it was a cloud of gossamer that wrapped around the charm in a tidy package, with extra glue of magical gift to secure it to the rest of the matrix at the right points for the warmth that would be collected to be released when it is below the temperature for water to freeze.

Gwyn held up the iron and garnet charm to the sun to inspect her enchantment.Yes that seemed all in order.

To finish it off, she rubbed it between her first finger and thumb, and sent a jolt of her gift to the charging part of the magical enchantment. She bidding that part to soak up all the energy it needed for 12 hours from the sun right now instead of over time. Luckily the enchantment didn't crisp up or burn out, and she felt a warm glow settle over her skin. Like she was sunbathing on a cool spring day instead of freezing in the dead of winter. Nodding with satisfaction, she held out the charm to Sadeen,

“Here, please take this token as a welcoming gift from the youngest lady of Haryse. I know it's small, and the enchantment might only last a week, but it's my hope it will offer you some comfort and help you to enjoy the festivities.”

Sadeen had been watching this stocky girl fiddle with a necklace pendant. Now she widened her eyes and was surprised into stillness.

“I... haven't anything to give in return” she finally ventured.

“Oh, sorry, ah, please, I wasn't meaning to be rude by offering a gift when you weren't expecting one. I feel more than repaid by the smile you gave earlier. Besides, I know that I'm making some stiff necked conservative ladies with no fashion sense upset by giving you a small token of regard instead of talking to them.Further, as young as I am, any excuse to practice my skills that benefits someone else means a lot to me. Though I am worried that i've blundered and ruined the chance to see you smile again”

The words were crisp and quick and bubbled out in a nervous stream, but Gwyn’s husky voice made everything seem more grave than it was supposed to. Part of her that urged her to flee, but she fought back, saying that running away would be far more embarrassing than waiting for the woman to decide if she wanted the charm.

“That old baroness of Stonemountain and the matriarch of Tirragen? I'm surprised anyone else noticed they were talking about me.”  
The smile was encouraging and mischievous this time. Just as gorgeous. 

The charm exchanged hands, and once it did, some strain at the edge of Sabeen's face eased off, and her posture relaxed.  
“Why, that's remarkable. Thank you. I'm glad you found it worth giving to me.”

Gwyn's face felt tight and too warm in the winter breeze.

“You’re welcome. Uh, good. I um. I'm going to go... cider. Drink. Nice meeting you. Hope we do this again sometime. Well, maybe not this, but see each other. Happy midwinter."  
Gwyn’s embarrassment at being tongue tied turned her feet and had her scampering away. Somewhere without gorgeous women with smiles got her head swimming. 

\---

Bexy caught up to her behind a cider stall,

“What was that?” Bexy’s drawl was full of mischief.

“What was what?” Gwyn brushed imaginary bits of dust off her clothes and checked the hair ornaments in her very short hair.

“You with the Bazhir lady.”

“Well, obviously I was proposing marriage, Bexy. That's what 11 year olds do when they give a lady a trinket. I thought you knew” the sarcasm didn't do anything to banish the heat from her face.

“Oh I thought so, from the looks on your face. You looked dumbstruck and then panicked and blushy. So when are you going to tell Stefan? Or did he arrange the wedding with her parents already?”

Bless Bexy and her ability to go along with anything Gwyn threw at her.

“Ah that's the trouble you see. Stefan made an arrangement with an evil count, and I'm hoping to elope before it becomes true.”

Bexy laughed high and sweet. Gwyn appreciated it as much as she was jealous of the clear sound. Her laughs sounded more like papers falling off a desk, or an asthma attack.

“Don't worry, he isn't gonna do something like that to you till you get your shield.”

“Ha.” Gwyn knew marriage was a must. She and her family’s steward had had many long arguments about it. As much as she wanted to help her family’s fief, she wanted to be a knight far more. 

“Tea?” Bexy changed the subject as her mistress’s face went from embarrassed blushes to tenseness. 

“Please. My plumage still feels all ruffled.”

“Do birds even drink tea?”

“Oh surely, in fact Daine told me so herself” Gwyn goofed back at her quick minded friend. 

They linked elbows, Bexy's simpler skirts brushed against the bushy and beaded heavy things Gwyn wore, and they walked down to a riverside tea shop. Gwyn noticed that she could almost see over Bexy's shoulder if she stood on tiptoe. Hopefully that meant she had grown some more. Though she doubted she could get close to Sir Kel's height and build.

At the tea shop, Gwyn opened the door with a flourish for her maid, who curtseyed in play at her, and they arranged themselves at a table by the shop window. Gwyn took the seat nearest the window, so she didn't have to see all the potential water lurking under the ice of the river.

A serving girl came over, just a year or two younger than Gwyn herself,

The girl recited, “Hello, would you like to try the new drink popular in Maren? It is stronger than tea, but without any alcohol like wine or beer. Fragrant, and nutty. You can order it with added sugar or added spices if the guest prefers” 

“i think i'll just stick with your excellent apple tea, if it's all the same.” Bexy chimed.

“I'll try it” gwyn volunteered.  
“However, I'll also take a mug of the foamy green tea, matcha, in case I don't care for it. Thank you”

the serving girl dipped and turned in one smooth movement that Gwyn envied. She could jump across alley ways, but she doubted it would ever look graceful.

They chatted about Bexy's cousins and their new baby on the way. Gwyn wanted to try making something for the nursery. Bexy had been teaching her embroidery and cross stitching, but it was almost as hard as penmanship. Something for a baby nursery seemed safe enough because the baby wouldn't really care how it looked, and the parents would probably like an extra blanket or set of swaddling cloths.

They were still talking designs and difficulty levels when the server came back with a tray with three different cups. The handle-less ceramic mug was set in front of gwyn, a snowflake decorated tea cup for Bexy, and a tiny glass cup with a gold lip and handle filled with a deep dark brown liquid also set before Gwyn.

 

“what is this drink called? I'm afraid I forgot if you mentioned it before.”

“Coffee, my lady”

“My it certainly is fragrant. Do you know what spices are added?”

The girl’s eyes squeezed shut to recall the information, “Uh, lessee, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.”

“goodness All in this little cup? That sounds amazing.” Gwyn grinned at her and tested a sip.  
Gwyn's eyes rolled back in pleasure at the strong, sweet taste. Then closed her eyes to better focus on the next sip. It had the same play between bitter and sweet that yamani green tea had, but stronger, more bitter, and not as smooth. It was a delight.

Slowly she worked her way through the small cup. Savoring each sip before she opened her eyes again.

“I said, good I take it?” Bexy prompted,

“Hm? I didn't hear you say anything. Sorry. That drink is heavenly. I should have let you try some, but I don't think I could have let go of the cup. Seriously sweet and bitter. and better than any tea I've had before.”

“I’d rather you keep it, m'lady. I'll stick with tea with bits of dried apple. No reason to mess with a staple.”

“I think I want to make this a staple. I wonder what house got the trade agreement with Maren, maybe I can convince Stefan to muscle in on that, or at least get it from them on the cheap.”

Bexy was shaking her head  
“you sound like him more each letter he sends up from Haryse.”

“well... i'm going to take that as a compliment.”

Her fief was being run by stefan till Gwyn was of age, and he was shrewd as anyone. She got weekly reports that read more like text books on how the fief was doing, what decisions he had made, and what conditions and considerations had lead him to decide that way. He seemed to know the labyrinth of tax laws like his own backyard.

Gwyn considered ordering another coffee, but decided to not be hypnotized by it more today. Instead she went back to talking needle point with Bexy over the matcha, powdered green tea whisked with hot water into a foamy drink.Yamani style drinks and sweets were popular as princess Shinkokami captured the people's affection.

 

Gwyn barely slept that night.  
Tomorrow evening she would be dining in the royal court, tended on by pages. There would be two lady knights and two lady pages at the court! She played scenario after scenario of what she could say to the lady knights, or the pages if they happened to be serving her. It was really too much to bear.

She tried to settle her mind with some more exercises, slow flowing poses that stretched and strengthened her muscles, then tried numbing her brain with the tediousness of embroidery.  
Her eyes and mind knew exactly where the needle should go, but trying to convince her fingers to direct the damn thing into the proper spot took multiple tries for each decoration.

The guards down the street were calling midnight before she knew it, and sleepiness still wouldn't leave her.Gwyn gave up and changed from the bed robe to a simple shift and loose britches and went downstairs to the kitchen.

The night staff weren't too surprised to see her, insomnia was a rare visitor, but common enough that they greeted her with friendly smiles and sympathy instead of getting nervous and skittish about a noble in their midst.The cook's assistant, in the middle of making dough and preparing vegetables, pickles, and candied fruit for tomorrow, handed her a mug of warm milk sweetened with honey.

She accepted it with quiet thanks and tried to focus on the comforting effects of the drink.  
But nerves had their own ideas.

“I think i'm going to go for a run.” she announced to the room, “Just around the district. I'm too nervous about the festivities tomorrow to relax.”  
“Should I get someone to go with you, mlady?” the cook asked her while shaping some braided rolls  
“Nah. I won't be sticking to just the streets. And I'll be careful. Besides, we've got those new gass lamps out on the street corners. So I won't be running blind.”  
The cook nodded, “I'll make sure the housemaid knows to expect you back then. If you could come in the front door to ease her worries?”

The house maid, Bexy's grandma, had ideas about what nobles should do, and running around, jumping off buildings in the dark was not a noble's task

“I can do that. I don’t want to spread my own nerves around. Thank you for the tea.”

She scampered up the stairs noiselessly as she could to change into heavier clothes. The charcoal wool shirt and navy thickly padded britches under black boots would make her less noticeable to any other insomniac people in the district. Unicorn District was well to do, and nobles in town kept late hours with their gatherings and soirees. She missed out on a great part of that, being quite young, and also trying to train herself to keep pages' hours of dawn to dusk. She made sure she had a cluster of crystal in her belt pouch, and double checked her belt knife hung out of her way.

She slipped out into the cold, clear air out her window, gently shutting it behind her with long practice. The cold felt invigorating, and the flurry of stars and thin chip of moon beamed encouragement.

She dove off the window sill toward the ground, tumbling in mid air to land in a crouch, and smoothly churn from crouch to run at the back fence. Rolling to her feet on the road, she decided to go a bit easy tonight. The roofs might have new ice accumulated from the steady breeze from the west. So she played along the streets, climbing light poles, running up walls as high as she could to flip at the top and come back down, and vaulting over decorative empty fountains to climb up statues. Heading back home, she hopped up on the wide lip of the mermaid fountain and, against all expectations, Gwyn slipped.

She blinked and wrenched her weight to try to correct the slide and plant her other foot, but then that one slipped too. /What the hell?/ Her mind chattered at her as her body moved in slow motion. The fountains have been empty of water for weeks and I haven't seen anything but minor frost all night. She scrambled to stay upright, and then to at least fall correctly. Then her left foot caught traction unexpectedly, the ankle rolled, and her whole weight came down on her right thigh against a decorative fish on the outside of the fountain lip.

There wasn't any time to try to spread the impact, just hit, feel a disturbing crack and shift deep inside her leg, and then she bounced off the damn fountain to fall ungainly on the cobblestones.  
She breathed through her grinning teeth in quick short pants as she tried to readjust. It seemed like every movement somehow disturbed her right leg.

/It can't be broken./

/I can't have fucking broken my fucking leg, again, against a fountain decorated with fucking sea creatures. no./  
/no I forbid it./

She gently patted a hand down the leg of her britches to find a divot and bend far above where her knee was supposed to be.

“Fuck.”

She was as empty headed as she was clumsy. That was all there was too it. She was 10 blocks from home, and she was afraid to crawl or limp home with a twisted ankle and a broken leg. She didn't want to be laid up for another year.

Another year.

Stuck being in a weak and broken body instead of being a page.

There was a dull thump as something solid hit the fountain, and a matching dull pain in her fist.

She punched the fountain again.

And again

Something in her fist felt fragile, which just made her grin harder with hatred and self loathing. Then she punched the fountain again.

A decorative shell crumbled as a knuckle burst open.

She kept punching. Transmuting pain into hate and then hate back into pain till a yawning abys seemed to open up and she slipped into the dark.

\----

She knew before she opened her eyes she was in a hospital. They all stank the same.

She frowned in self pity and distress, feeling her eyes prick with tears. This wasn't fair.

“i'm an idiot.” she announced to the room. Eyes still closed., then bared her teeth in her pain-eating smile. Of course she was. She could have used the Gift to help her back home. But instead she'd given into self anger and hurt herself worse. Instead she had worried her house staff. Instead she wasn't going to rub elbows with any lady warriors tonight.

This feeling of hitting rock bottom was familiar. She pushed off of it and opened her eyes.

Corel sat beside the hospital bed that was trapping her with blankets and wrappings around her injuries.

Oddly, there was a small ginger cat in his lap, apparently asleep.

He nodded, in agreement with her statement or in greeting. Or both, who knew.

“You're only an idiot if you don't learn from this.”

“Well, I have plenty of regrets. They are pounding the lesson home.”

“What's the lesson?” he prompted gruffly

“never trust the sea, or anything nautical in design.” she retorted just as gruffly,

“Gwyndian.”

“I'm serious, there wasn't any ice anywhere else in the streets, and I had been running for at least an hour by then.”

“Gwyndian.” the warning tone increased slightly.

She sighed, “I should have had someone go with me. I shouldn't have gone running in the dark in the winter time, regardless of iciness. I should have calmed down when I slipped and used my Gift to prevent the fall. I should have used my gift to get me home instead of panicking and getting angry..” her voice kept breaking and getting hoarser as the tense tirade continued.  
“i know I fucked up. But I did tell someone where I was going and what I was doing. I did let them know how to expect me. I did bring a knife and crystals as foci for magic. I was theoretically prepared. If not as well prepared as I could have been. I know. Stop lecturing me.”

He nodded in satisfaction. Like he had actually been lecturing her. 

Corel leaned and handed her a cup of water, but the shift in his weight disturbed the cat on his lap. It raised it's head with a sleepy chirp and looked around.

It locked tawny yellow eyes on her and leapt lightly from lap to bed.

The impact of its, her, weight on the bed made it dip and jostle her leg, and she smiled in grimace.

The cream and reddish brown cat strolled up the bed to Gwyn's too-soft pillow, and primly bumped foreheads with her. That duty done, she spun in place on top of the pillow and laid back down.

Gwyn looked a question at Corel, who answered as she finally took the water from him,

“She's how we knew where to find you. She had your belt pouch in her mouth and scratched the front door till Margrette answered.”  
His blond brows wrestled together like thunder clouds, “Margrette was terrified for you.”

Gwyn wrenched her gaze away from him and promised herself she would pull the ceiling down on herself if she cried. Disappointing people she liked was even worse than being in a hospital. 

After a long pause, Corel continued, “Then this dainty thing lead us back to you.” 

That wasn't terribly surprising. The animals at the royal palace were famous for being oddly intelligent. And doubtless that intelligence had spread around Corus as palace animals found mates around the city.

“You had punched out a good sized hole in the fountain by then. But of course you've got lots of broken bones in your hand now.”

she nodded dejectedly again.

She couldn't bring herself to ask what the healers had already done, or if they were going to do more. She knew some damage just couldn't be healed completely. Even Duke Baird hadn't been able to repair the damage she had done to her vocal chords, however that had come about. And while the shakes in her hands were better, just a sort of lack of coordination now, that hadn't gone away completely either. Besides the limitations of healing abilities, Her body was already showing resistance to being healed. That usually only happened after decades of healings. But Gwyn was in many ways an overachiever. 

She didn't want to ask what Stefan had said or thought. If he would pay for the best healers or not.

Corel, blessedly, stopped talking and let her stew. 

She wanted him to leave, but after her huge mistake, knew it would be unfair to ask him to go. Her error had not been in having him along in the first place.  
Lips pressed together tightly, she handed back the empty water glass and laid back by the cat hogging the pillow.  
Gwyn floated on a stormy cloud of negative emotions for an eternity.

\----------------

Someone came in and laid a hand on her forehead, coolness spread from the hand down to her right hand and leg and pooled there, stinging but soft. More whirled lightly around her left ankle then dissipated.

A familiar, creaky old voice commented “You should drink more milk, and eat more yogurt and cheese. And certainly eat more dark leafy greens, Gwyn of Heryse. Your bones will thank you.”

“I'll keep that in mind, your grace.” her voice was gravely and low. Nicely menacing she thought. Maybe she'd keep this lower register. It felt better on her throat anyway.

Opened eyes revealed Duke Baird, looking just the same. Though this time she was able to see the sigils of cleanliness and endurance stitched with magic into his clothes under the embroidery.

“So did I crack one of the old breaks in that leg? I didn't even fall from very far. It seems ridiculous that it would have broken like that.”

“Mm? oh. No, when a bone heals it does so a little sloppily. That seems to be something the body does this on purpose. It doesn't remake the same pattern in the bone, but shores it up, so to speak. The bone is denser and stronger where the breaks healed properly, and yours did heal properly, if I do say so myself.  
“This is a new breakpoint. And distance has only a small thing to do with bones breaking. From the bruising, it seems you hit a hard angle just the right way. Falling distances leads to some more minor fractures, which you seem to have had your fair share of, but they healed just fine on their own.  
“However I do not have as clear a picture about the injuries on hand... how on earth did you manage that?”

she looked down at the club of white bandages surrounding her hand.  
“I guess I got angry. Then I punched the fountain. And it hurt. so.. I got angry. And punched, which hurt, so I got angry... “

level green eyes found her brown hazel eyes,

“You mustn't deal out that kind of punishment to yourself.”

for all the world like he thought he was her father, the old shit. She grimaced and started to say something, but he held up a calm hand

“If you seek knighthood, you should know you're going to make mistakes sometime. Mistakes that will cost you pain, cost you opportunity, and cost people you are meant to protect their lives. It is part of the responsibility you will be taking up along with the shield. If you deal out this kind of punishment onto yourself every time you make one mistake or another, you're going to make yourself unable to help anyone. Punish the guilty, not the clumsy.”

She bit the inside of her cheek and studied her hand.  
She nodded after a bit. For all that she hated how patronizing he sounded, this seemed like some sound advice.  
She looked at him and then looked away quickly

“When can I get out of here?” Gwyn wasn't happy with how small her voice sounded.

But he seemed to understand it was tiredness, not weakness.  
“I've set the bones to healing. You should use some sort of support on them, a cane or walking stick in your left hand for the leg, and avoid any heavy lifting with your right hand for a week. The front office will have a brace you can pick up and use for your hand and wrist.

“Alright. Thank you your grace.”

“Please, call me Baird.”  
“Maybe once I've got my shield, your grace.” she attempted a smile. As much as she hated healers, he was the one she trusted the most. 

His whole face seemed to be lifted up by his smile, unfurling like a flag.  
“It's a deal then. God's all bless, Lady Haryse.”

“Same to you, Duke Baird.”

\-------------

One plain wooden cane and a lightweight brace fashioned from bamboo wood on her right wrist later, she hustled to the small carriage Corel had waiting. The cat followed and hopped into the carriage as comfortable in claiming space as if she had done it her whole life.  
The cat ignored her, despite following her, so she ignored the cat.  
She couldn't make the banquet. Not and look half ready, but his grace made sure to let her know she was welcomed and expected at the palace ballroom where people would gather after the banquet.

The gown for tonight was a soft yellow, with male cardinals stitched in bright red on the torso and down one side of the skirt. They were shown flying, from all points of view. The under dress was a peach, so were her hose and shoes. It was a very ladylike, stylized version of the pages uniform, softer and flowing. 

Light face paint was applied. Just some darkening along the eyes and covering the pimples and blemishes that come from being adolescent with a creamy mix just the right shade to match her warm colored skin.  
Lastly, unpolished cobalt ear drops and pendant were added, to contrast the rest of the outfit in the current style.

She traded the plain wooden walking stick with a sword cane she had found in the market place this summer. It was a fine pale wood wrapped in silver wire along the hilt. At the market, the silver wire wrapped bit of colored glass as the pommel originally. She had used her jewelry making tools to switch out the glass for a nice piece of quartz the day she bought it.

With this in hand, she tried to keep the weight off her right leg and quick as she could joined Stefan in the carriage waiting outside the house.

“Lady Gwydian! My word how can you manage to get into such a state?” he seemed appalled by the bamboo brace and cane

“To test you and see how much you care, dear Stefan. Please do not worry overly much.”' she tried to attempt the lofty court tones that rose and fell in a half sing song

“Impossible child. You didn't answer my question.”  
It was important to her that he not regret taking on stewardship or regret backing her claim when he had never met her before her parents were gone.  
“I'm sorry. I fell. Last night. I went for a walk to steady my nerves about today, and fell, banged my leg and hand on the way.”

“At least look trite instead of proud when listing off your injuries.”

“Well, sir, I do want to become a knight.”

“I know. But you must also survive knighthood, my lady Heryse.”  
“I will. You have my word Stefan.”

\-----------------

the gala was... gorgeous.  
Everything from the food the squires were serving to the clothes to the people to the wallpaper to the chandeliers.

Gorgeous.

It seemed far too dreamy and unreal, with all the bodies and color and noise.  
Almost all anyone wanted to talk to her about was the brace and how she was holding up.  
Glib 'I fell on some ice' and 'I'm out of mourning and am looking forward to starting page training' seemed to be the only words she could fit into the busy atmosphere other than 'hello' and 'nice to see you again'

people wished her good luck or awkwardly changed the subject when she mentioned page training.

And she didn't see any of the famous warriors she seemed to instinctively remember besides the king and queen. Gwyn wished she could have finally met one of the lady knights. It seemed so important to meet them. 

After she had gotten to used to the utter beauty of the ballroom, her skin grated from the closeness in the air. And with the murmur of voices that seemed to be competing with the musicians to see who can be loudest.

Stefan escorted her away after a handful of unending hours.

In the quiet refuge of the carriage, they talked about the eddies and currents of gossip they had both heard, and Gwyn admitted to being disappointed to not seeing any of the lady knights.

He patted her knee awkwardly to console her and asked, “Would you like to play a game of chess when we get back to the town house?”

She smirked. Stefain was unbeatable at chess, but Gwyn loved a challenge, “if you can stand the heat. I'll beat you for sure this time.”

\------------------

The next day she opened presents and sent a flock of thank you letters to the courier service.  
Most gifts were something to do with her upcoming page service, or bolts of cloth. There was a small package of beans, of all things in creation, from Bexy. The note attached explained, 'these are coffee beans. I've learned how to prepare it from the riverside cafe we visited.”

Bexy gave her a close hug and thanks for a set of rosewood knitting needles in varying widths, and a similar collection of rosewood thin, dull hooks for crochet. Both sets were wrapped in a cloth kit roll for compact and padded storage that Gwyn had spelled against fire, water, and for durability.

Corel and his daughter stopped by for mulled cider and for everyone to exchange thanks. Dirgette had given her a lovely bow and quiver, which Gwyn hoped she could one day do justice to. And Corel had bought her a book on ancient women warriors. Written in his plain, neat script in the cover was 'you'll be in a book just like this one day'

Stefan gave her a small bag of semi precious jewels, rocks, and minerals, and warned her that he would not be approving the spending money of any other such items for the rest of the year. Despite the scolding, she beamed at him over the pouch.

All good times have their troubles of course. A deeply apologetic letter arrived the next day from Duke Baird. He recommended she not start page service till the fall. Autumn was the traditional start of a page’s year after all, and the duke strongly cautioned about entering page service so soon after a bad break. The leg was proving resistant to magical healing, and would need at least 5 months to heal naturally. 

Gwyn seethed through those months. She couldn’t train in fighting or in running, but she worked her muscles as hard as she could otherwise. Everyday she tried to work herself to exhaustion in order to avoid wallowing in bitterness and anger. When she finally did start doing slow runs at the beginning of summer, the orange cat always accompanied her. The fluffy thing didn’t seem at all interested in her otherwise, so Gwyn continued to ignore the cat back. 

As summer ripened into harvest season, any bitterness in Gwyn at the injury got transmuted into excitement. Soon she could finally start page training. Her moodiness became daydreaming. She was extra cautious with herself as the weeks went by. She wasn’t going to let anything get in her way of starting service at the palace this time.


	3. In Which our Hero Finally Reaches The Palace and Makes 1 (one) Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> gwyn finally gets a physical description!  
> Bexy and Gwyn arrive to the palace. But Gwyn realizes she has Forgotten something Important.  
> Cast,  
> Gwyn, Bexy, Head of Page Servents Sara, Training Master Sir Pendraig haMinch, Stable Master Toby, Sir Kelandry of Mindelan, Gloaming, Orange Cat, 1st year page Ahmond ibn Zahier,

Gwyn insisted on stopping for coffee before heading to the palace. Such an important day required an auspicious start. The river stank, as usual, of fish and algae and other scummy water things. But Riverside Cafe smelt lovely with the door closed.

The coffee was condensed delight. Gwyn tipped the waitress a ridiculous amount for good luck. 

As she and Bexy walked back to the townhouse to pick up the packed bags Gwyn restrained herself from skipping and jumping in excitement. They took the town house’s carriage up the long hill to the palace gates. The carriage and horses were lead off past the familiar gates and a servant lead them through the maze of the palace. Bexy split off after a hug to speak with the head of palace servants, Sara.

His lordship and training master of the pages, Sir Padraig haMinch had an office just outside the pages’ wing. The office looked a little less imposing than she had built it up in her mind to be. The windows were small and high up, for lighting purposes, not for show. Gas lamps in decorative holders helped the windows illuminate the space. The solid oak desk was tidy, but obviously used often with sheafs of parchment and slates stacked up neatly, and a holder for chalk, quills, and pieces of charcoal that matched the desk. The stark solidness was balanced with two leafy potted plants on either side of the door, and a small bonsai arrangement on a corner of the desk. It was the Doshojo style, she thought, striking with the roots of the miniature pine tree draped over a piece of striated red and tan sandstone as big as two of her fists.

If the office was more ordinary than she imagined it would be, Sir Padraig haMinch was much more imposing. He was a lot taller now than she remembered seeing him at some function or another. His hair was a short, thick pelt of red and silver hair, to match his silver and red goatee and mustache. His eyes also seemed silvered,but that might be a trick of the light. Immortals had silver eyes; his may just be an odd, pale blue. They made him seem far more predatory than she had expected from a training master in his fifties. 

“Lady Gwydian of Haryse. Please sit down.” He had a clipped and rhythmic voice, with only hints of a northern accent. She wanted to perch on the back of the chair, but decided she should sit normally for at least this first meeting. 

“You will understand that while you are in knight training, the proper form of address for you will be Page or Squire.”

/Will she now?/ Gwyn did understand that. She even looked forward to being Page Gwyn instead of Young Lady Gwyn. Still, part of her felt irritated at the imperious manner the training master had. She only nodded and folded her hands.

“You may refer to me as Lord haMinch or Sir. Have you a body servant with you?”

Ah a direct question, so she could finally talk it seemed. She lifted her chin and answered  
“yes, Sir haMinch.” the bare minimum answer. 

“Very well. Such a servant is considered a privilege, and is your sole responsibility. Your servant is not considered part of the palace staff, but may be free to use the palace areas for servants. You are in charge of supplying your servant and getting a healer in case of accident or sickness.”

/He's being very avoident about what gender this servant is,/ she noted. /Maybe this is a memorized script./

“Please be sure that your servant understand they are to answer to you and Miss Sara, the head of Staff in the pages wing.”

/I do believe he uses please the way other people use 'you shall' there isn't any hint of a request in these sentences./ Gwyn thought. 

“You are expected to keep your door open when in the company of other pages or squires, and to keep the door open when you visit any fellow pages or squires in their rooms at the palace. “Failure to do so will not be tolerated.

“The rest of today is yours to unpack and settle in. tomorrow you will be assigned a sponsor page to show you the basics of castle navigation, the rules and regulations you have not been told by myself or any other trainer, and answer any questions you may have.” he rattled on in a speech Gwyn felt very sure now was memorized.  
“I will see you tomorrow morning outside your door after the first bell. Breakfast is served at the second bell. Lateness to a meal or a class will be punished with extra work.”  
“Do you understand what I have laid out for you today.”

Even though it was phrased as a question, Gwyn could tell it really wasn’t meant to be. She nodded and supplied a  
“Yes, Sir”

“On your way then, Page Gwyndian. Welcome to the palace”

“Thank you Sir”

she stood, bowed, and headed to where she had left Bexy.  
/Well that felt anticlimactic./ she thought. Gwyn had expected to get some sense of initiation, or being brought into the fold. Instead it had felt like Stefain telling her about a new building being built in Fief Haryse. 

Sara was watching for her at the hallway of the pages wing, that housed about thirty to fifty young people at a time on the ground floor.

“Here's your key, young page. Though I don't suppose you're quite as young as other first years.” the apple cheeked pursed her lips as she looked Gwyn over,  
“Don't worry a wit about that my dear. Yer door and lower shutter are bespelled against lock pickin'. Do be careful not to lose the key, that's a dear. I'll lead you on over to your room here. It's down a bit on yer right.”

Gwyn liked the lady's hard hands that pressed a key into her own small hands even if she didn’t like being called dear. Gwyn liked her loose and friendly lower city accent. It seemed very much like daises being grown in a loose brick: sweet when it's not being thrown at your face.

Still a door down, Gwyn could hear Bexy's eastern drawl insist  
“No, I know what mlady prefers. And she prefers no bed. I only called you hear to move it, not to argue with me. I'm sure there's somewhere in this place you can place an extra bed. No of course she won't be upset with you. Mithros.”  
“Please go along with her,” Gwyn interrupted from the doorway to the couple of fellows looking confused in her room.  
“Though if it is possible, I'd be happy to allow my maid the use of this hulking monstrosity of a bed in her side room instead. Then you just would have to move that one room, and the standard servant's bed can go down to stores. Much easier on everyone, I think.”

The fellows looked confused at her now instead. Gwyn looked back at all three with her coolest, politest look. The one that definitely isn't a trap for the unwary.  
“i am not joking. I would consider it a favor. Thick mattresses and downy blankets make me feel like i'm drowning.”

This candid explanation seemed to satisfy Sara, who stood behind Gwyn. The head of staff urged the fellows to do what Bexy had originally said.

“Oh,” Gwyn continued, “with the extra space i'd also really appreciate an extra work table, or bookshelf or something like that. I kinda feel in the way though, so Bexy, i'll leave it to you, alright?”

“Yes, yes go run off all that energy. I'll get things settled and unpacked.”

“You're the best” 

“I should get a raise!”

Gwyn laughed her dry-leaves laugh and coughed an “of course!”

\----

Gwyn found the library first.

It took some extra directions from a servant in the standard white shirt and dark britches, but the pages wing's library was fairly convenient to her room. 

It smelled better than a bookshop. The leather bound books were so gorgeous.  
She paced around the shelves, making a map of where the subjects were laid out, and of course noting how tall the shelves were. There were low beams too. Perfect for easy transportation over the heads of other library guests. 

It was tempting to stick around here and start a number of research projects. But she should learn where other places in the pages wing were. She had been to the palace before, but the page’s wing was tucked out of the way from where guests would normally go. 

She wandered, but tried to avoid people who weren't palace servants. Meeting the other pages right now seemed like too much. She wanted to be prepared for the first impressions she gave them.

Outside there was a kitchen garden, complete with a few fruit trees. Some workers were picking pears on tall ladders. She decided to copy them in a way, and went to climb a tall oak that gave off lots of shade in the sun-drenched day. On her way up, she saw over a low dividing wall into a pasture for horses. /So that's why the smell of animals is so strong here./ The pasture ended on on side at a broad building she assumed was the stables.

These were probably the pages’ stables, so close the the pages’ wing.  
Pages’ stables cause each page trained with horses every damn day they could  
Fucking fuck  
/The stables. And horses. Goddamnit. I forgot/ Gwyn thumped her forehead with her palm. 

How could she have been so, so, blind? Of course she would have needed to practice horseback riding before she came here. She remembered in a rush all the times she had almost asked for some pointers from a groom or decided she would do it later.  
But never  
She never did it  
Fucking fuck.  
Well now she pretty much had to. It was her last chance before training started.

She got out of the tree in a controlled fall to the ground, and then followed the wall around to the stables in a quick walk. The stables concentrated the smell of animals and dung and hay into it's own heavy, grassy smell of horse. It made her nose wrinkle, but she stood and memorized it for a while, breathing with just her nose and just her mouth by turns to acclimate. /This is what it's supposed to smell like/ she told herself. /The palace stables are probably the best kept in the country. So this smell is a good smell./

She noticed a few of the horses were eyeing her once she stopped getting distracted by the smelling

“uh, hello” she tried out. Loud enough to notify any stable hands that might be around, but she tried to talk to and for the horses. She was fairly confident they would understand her like most palace animals could. If they wanted to. 

“so... the thing is... I might have ridden a horse uh, maybe twice? And even then, I haven't learned how to properly take care of them after. What's it called. Grooming? Like, I know there are combs and brushes... i'm sorry. I know I should have learned this sooner.”  
she spread her hands helplessly.  
“i can be sorta.. single minded. But that does mean that once I am taught how, I will learn quickly, and I won't slack off or be lazy about it. I was wondering uh,”

still no humans had shown up to see what she was doing in the stables, so she soldiered on as best she could  
“would you mind asking a human, a two-legger like me? To explain things for me? And I know it might be a hassle, but someone I could practice with would be a great help. I know I really deserve to look the fool when we are choosing horses for the page training, but I... sorta.. would like to learn and not be rushed and accidentally fuck it up when the time comes.”

There was some horsey noises. It sounded soft and repetitive. Whickering? Maybe? Or was that a whinny? Really it sounded like laughter.

She turned her head to find a grey horse with white and darker grey spots along his neck and back. He, at least, gwyn had no idea if the horse was a he or a she, huffed at her when they met eyes and he made the horsey noise again.

She reached back to rub the back of her neck. She assumed he was laughing at her and went with it,  
“yeah. I know. I'm.. I can be kinda foolish. I probably deserve to be made fun of. I'm a spoiled upper class city kid. I haven't left corus since I got here. And spoiled rich kids use carriages. Though I love to run and climb. I also like making jewelry, studying magic and reading...”

A voice with the round vowels and the burr to his Rs that marked a northerner said from somewhere above her  
“she says ya sound like a wee lost lamb that wants to get out of th' rain”

Gwyn froze, and locked herself in place to keep from looking around like a chipmunk. She answered back the voice,  
“well, I am, kinda. I forgot that being in the rain was even a thing i'd have to worry about.”

A short man with fuzzy blond hair like a dandelion and a short beard to match dropped from the loft above  
“she also says that fer being spoilt, you aren't makin very many demands on them. And treating them politely like. So she'll let ya practice on her. I can show ya how.”  
he had bright tawny eyes under bushy eyebrows, about ten or fifteen years older than she was. With wide shoulders and a bit of a belly.  
/More like a blond bear than a dandilion/, she thought.  
“Thank you very much. My name's Gwyn, uh, Gwydian of Haryse, but really page Gwyn will be nice.”

“Toby.” he offered a hand  
she shook it and he seemed satisfied with her grip  
“right then, tell me what you do know about horses, and i'll fill in th' gaps.”

“Well, it’s not much. I know we're in a stable. And I think the horses are in stalls. Upstairs is the loft? And uh... female horses are fillies or mares. Male horses are colts and stallions. And some stallions are gelded? Which is the term for castrated horses. And that's done because of breeding, or something like that? um.  
“They have hooves that are shod by a farrier? And um. There are saddles... and reins.. “  
“I don't know how to do anything with saddles or reigns. um. You're supposed to... brush horses?  
“I really don't know very much. You can easily just guess I've never spent more than a minute in a stable before.”

he looked at her like she'd just crawled out from under a rock and he was surprised she was still alive.  
“Then let me show ya around the stable”  
He explained the hay loft and feed room to her, showed how a feed bag went over the nose and looped around the back of the horse's ears. Next was the tack room, with racks of saddles of all kinds it seemed, plenty of blankets both to go under saddles and to cover up horses when it was cold. There were also grooming kits. He picked one and handed it to her.

“all riight. Then. Come over to Gloaming with me.”  
he lead her over to the amused grey horse from before.

“hello Gloaming. I um, hope you were laughing at me back there and not cussing me out or something.”  
Gloaming tossed her head and eyeballed Toby for a moment.

Toby translated the look, “yeah she thinks you're amusing. She's been sorta bored over the summer, so she thinks you're a hoot. Come on in, I'll show you the stall before we lead her out for groomin”  
/so it was a mare after all. Fuck i’m bad at this/  
The stall was spacious, but seemed cramped with the heavy breathing of the mare inside. A corner had a feeding bin and there was a water bucket.

Gwyn could feel her eyes were a little too wide.  
“now, here's how you catch her with the holster. We use this to lead them around the stables”  
The holster was all the long straps.It seemed the goal was to not let them touch the ground, and so mostly the slack was stored over the horse's neck.

He took it off Gloaming, to hand back to her, and she took a deep breath.  
“the worst thing she can do is bite and kick me, right?”

“sure lass, but the biting and kicking can do some damage. She won't harm ya though.'

“right.”  
another deep breath. The horse was just so big.

Placing the long lead over Gloaming's neck and then slipping the loop over her nose wasn't so bad though. The mare's nose was softer and warmer, and damper, than velvet.

The ears were also very soft when she slowly worked the end behind Gloaming's head.  
Next he had her lead the mare out of the stall and into the working area just outside. The lead of the holster was secured up and out to either side to keep the horse in one place. It all seemed pretty superfluous with such a smart horse, Gwyn thought. But appreciated being shown all the proper steps.

“Alright lass, now here's your grooming kit. This one here's a curry brush. It's used first to rough up all the loose hair and dirt. Here's a stiff brush. It helps what the curry started, and also is used on the legs and belly. Those are more sensitive and ticklish on horses so don't use the hard curry brush there. The soft brush is used all over the beast to smooth things out and make sure she's comfortable. Got it so far?”

Gwyn picked up the curry brush that had hard wooden bumps sticking up from the flat disk. A leather handle was fixed onto the back. “this used on the back first to break up dirt. Then the stiff brush brushes away dirt and scrubs the belly and legs. And the soft brush gets everything laying flat again.”

“aye. There's also a face curry brush and a face brush. They're the smaller ones there. Just use those on the face, keeps things hyginic, you ken?”

“yes. Ok. I ken”

“also for the face you'll use a rag around the eyes and to clear out the nostrils gentle like.  
“this here is a hoof pick. It's got bristles also attached to brush away dirt. We're gonna start with that. Now here's the pick.”  
“yer gonna stand next to her, keep both your toes pointed forward, and don't let them slide toward the horse cause then she might step on ya. She can't see underneath her.  
“now lean against her shoulder, and run your hand down her leg and press the front of her hoof back towards her belly, there you see, she lifted that up for you.”

The horse's hoof was gigantic in Gwyn’s hand. Like a dinner plate, and had bits of dirt and hay inside a steel horseshoe.  
“Now see, ya take the pick, and you're gonna run the pick moving away from ya to break up what she's picked up, and push it out. She's got a bit of hoof called a frog toward the middle of her hoof, it's softer than the rest. Don't try to dig that out mind.”

Gently, Gwyn scraped at some dirt, then scraped some more till she hit a hard bony surface. This is ridiculous, she scolded herself. Kids half your age do this every day, stop being so skittish.

After a minute, she had cleared the dirt away to reveal a moon of white hoof with a dark spear thrusting toward the center of the horseshoe. Then. Horribly slowly, she did the other three hooves. It seemed to take forever. And she started getting flustered with herself for being so slow. It's not like this was hard. Just strange.

Using the brushes was much easier. It was like scritching and petting any animal. The hard curry brush was worked in circles, then the brushes in straight lines. Grooming Gloaming's face was even fun, cause the mare obviously enjoyed it and kept nuzzling her hands and fluttering her long eyelashes at Gwyn. Last was brushing out the mane and tail, using short strokes from the ends of the hair up toward the roots. By the end, Gwyn's shoulders were complaining about reaching up and doing such new and different things.

“Right then. Now i'll show you how to fix up her tack.”  
there was more?  
More?

It seemed like so much. But it would be weird if she could brush a horse down and not saddle one up. So she swallowed her dismay and a sigh to follow to the tack room. She traded the grooming kit for a bridle and blanket, while Toby carried the saddle back to the mare.

While he was explaining how to switch out the bridle for the holster lead, someone else came in. Gwyn winced to herself and kept her head down, trying to hide behind the horse's neck. 

Toby seemed to forget about showing her things though going to greet the person,  
“my Lady!”

He and the tall woman hugged and clasped arms  
“Toby i'm so happy I found you. I wanted your opinion about a stallion for Tsuki.” the lady's voice was medium and clear. Full of affection and respect for the fluffy blond bear man.

“I can in a moment m'lady I'm showing a new page some basics of hustling. She hadn't much call to learn it before coming here I guess.”  
/ugh Toby. You traitor./

“A new female page?” bright interest filled the voice. “I'm half glad I interrupted then”

The pair came back over, and Gwyn hurriedly tried to make herself seem more presentable, but she was covered with horse hair.

The woman was tall. Very tall. And dressed in light cream shirt and hose and salmon tunic. Her hair was pulled back away from her face in a short ponytail bouncing cheerily at the back of her head. Her eyes were a multicolored hazel, blues and greens and browns. They seemed to tilt down at the outside edges and make her seem dreamy. She looked middle aged, with sprays of crows feat accentuating those eyes, and her face was lightly lined with laughter. The badge on her breast, and the sword at her hip identified her. Double bordered crest of an owl over crossed glaives.

Gwyn goggled, “Shit that means you're That Toby. Who was with Sir Kel at Haven and New Hope. I am such an idiot I didn't even place you. Of course you are you've got horse magic and from the north.”

Toby chuckled and waved a hand at her  
“now don't you fret. I suppose you've figured out who she is, My lady, this is Gwyn of Haryse. Entering page service this year.”

Kel, Sir Kel, the brilliant lady knight, nodded and smiled. But Gwyn also recognized the flicker of sympathy she got so often when people met the poor orphaned noble.  
Mercifully, the knight didn't mention it.

“I can't explain how happy I am that there's a girl in each year for three years. I should try to make sure there's one next year also, just to keep this going.”

“That sounds good, lady knight.” Gwyn was floating in happiness

Kel grinned, “It will be hard. They stack things against you on purpose. Complaining just makes it worse. Don't give up. And try to make friends. That's the advice I give everybody.”

“Thank you. I'll keep it to heart.”

Kel nodded business like, and changed the subject  
“So what are you learning from Toby?”

“um, the basics. I... yeah the basics. I don't know much about horses.”  
Gwyn wished she could keep the blush off her face. Just because she was embarrassed it didn't help letting other people know that too!

“Toby's a good instructor. I'd try to be the first person at the stables when the horses for first years are picked. I'm sure you can find a good one then. Though they might try to stop you.”

“I can run fast. I can at least do that. So good. Thanks. Now I have a plan. Good” /stop babbling/ Gwyn chided herself

Kel smiled again, the lines etching deeper, and eyes brightening even more.  
“I'll be around for a while. Feel free to come by my rooms, though I know they will keep you busy.”

 

Flying high overhead in an updraft of happiness, Gwyn had forgotten her embarrassment, “Thank you, lady knight. Again. I um. That's kind of you to offer. I'll make time to come by.”

Kel nodded again and turned to Toby, “swing by yourself, I did want to ask you some breeding questions for Tuski. But no rush.”

“I'll be right over!” Toby hugged her unashamedly again and she, head and shoulders taller than him, patted him on the shoulder and ruffled his hair.

Gwyn felt frozen as Kel walked away. Mind fluttering about in excitement of seeing a hero in such a casual setting.

She wanted to chase after her and give Kel a hug too. And tell her that even when she hadn't remembered anything else about herself, not even her name or what her parent's looked like, she knew she wanted to be a lady knight like Sir Kel and Sir Alana.

“Gwyn?” By his tone she was pretty sure this wasn't the fist time he had tried to call her back from reality.

“Right,” Gwyn shook her head, “I'm here. Star struck. Sorry. ok. so. The halter gets uh, pulled down off the ears, then off the nose, but then you loop it around her neck, so she's still held by the halter till you get the bridle secured. I remember.”  
After the strange work of brushing and cleaning hooves, putting on a blanket and securing two belts was easy.

Toby had her take it all off, then wash her groom the horse again.  
“You brush them down before and after you saddle them. To make sure their coats won't get irritated or sore from the work you're having them do.”

“Thank you. I um. Really. Thank you. I don't know if I would have learned this as well during normal training. I owe you one.”

Toby made a wave of his hand to indicate she shouldn't worry, then had her lead Gloaming back to her stall. He fished out an apple from his vest, and handed it over to Gwyn,  
“I think you'll be ok. She likes apples a treat. I'll see you around lass. Gods bless”

Gwyn winced but managed a  
'you too. Thanks again Toby'.  
The gods' attention, even for something like blessings, made her feel uncomfortable.

She Turned to the horse and offered the apple on a flat palm,  
“And thank you, Gloaming. I'm happy I made you laugh before. Thanks for helping me out. That was all new stuff for me.”

\---------------

Gwyn ghosted back to her room in the pages quarters. she had to wait for a bit while a jubilant brown skinned boy - who also wore glasses, gwyn was happy to see someone other than herself be-speckled- talk with his manservant about the architecture of the palace.

She unlocked the door to her room and slipped in to find the original desk joined with a second desk and a bookshelf that already had some of her favorite texts and documents on the shelves. In the area where the bed used to be, her bed robe was hanging up, and there was an odd contraption on the ground. Gwyn bent to inspect it when Bexy came in from the attached room.

“hello lady, sorry, /page/ Gwyn. The men that were in here earlier suggested this camp cot. It is just as uncomfortable as your old pad to me, but they thought perhaps it would be easier on your aches and bruises as training is going on.”

It was a tarp stretched over a metal skeleton that, when she flipped it over and fiddled with it, folded into sixths in a small lightweight pack. She unfolded it again, and laid it out, snapping the metal legs back into place.  
“i'll try it. It certainly doesn't look cushiony.” Gwyn approved.

“no, my strange lady, it doesn't” bexy was grinning.

“you were gone for a while, so I readied a bath, and unpacked your things.”

“were they able to get you the big bed?”

“oh Gwyn, that would hardly be feasible in this small room. Besides, the palace beds aren't poorly made. And the blankets are lovely and thick”

“ok ok.” gwyn shuddered and held her hands up to fend off further descriptions  
“a bath sounds nice. Then we should probably turn in for the evening. Could you grab something from the servants' dining area for dinner? I don't think I feel up to meeting folks till later.”

“if you're sure, my lady. But you know that you can't avoid making friends forever.”

“yeah yeah.”  
gwyn grumbled into her shirt as she got ready for the bath.

A few solid splashes and some lavender scented soap later, she was feeling less equine and snuggled up with a book in her bed robe when Bexy came back in.

The rosemary, potato, and chicken pastries were amazing. And there were also seaweed wrapped rice balls with pickled plums hidden inside. Gwyn carefully peeled off the seaweed from hers, and chewed the rice ball happily.

Bexy got out some embroidery, and asked Gwyn to read from her book.  
Gwyn hesitated, then started some tea to soothe her throat during the reading and read out loud to her maid. She was pretty self conscious about her voice still. But it didn't tend to fizzle out or pop any more. But she thought she sounded like sand. Bexy seemed to like it though.

\----

That night, the orange and cream cat from Corus found her and snuggled up in her cot.  
“you again”

the cat blinked her eyes sleepily and stretched out a paw along Gwyn's tum.  
“Look, i'm not going to tell you that you can't be in here, but I'm not going to feed you. You can go to the cooks or Diane for that. I would ask you not to sleep on my chest. I don't like feeling like I'm suffocating, and I don't want to throw you across the room when I wake up in a panic cause I can't breathe.”

the cat started washing her paw in nonchalance.

“whatever to you too.”gwyn sighed.

The cat did supply a nice warmth on her legs, something solid and well, cuddly. Anything other than hugs with a human felt too intimate for Gwyn to feel comfortable. Even with the extra warmth and comfort, Gwyn couldn’t sleep. She meditated some, counting while she inhaled and exhaled and trying to let the world fall away. That occupied some time, but when she got bored, she planned out some jewelry pieces and midwinter gifts for people back home.

The guard's call that it was midnight made her get up and out of bed in frustration.  
The cat woke up smoothly and easily sprang off her legs to rearrange herself back on the cot once Gwyn vacated it.

Gwyn read some. She wished she knew what texts the teachers at the palace would be schooling them in so she could read a head or something.

Giving up on rest and relaxation when the guard called two after midnight, she changed quietly into some of her darker clothes from home and started doing all the exercises she could think of.  
It was two hours before dawn, and Gwyn was feeling caged and cooped up.

She wrote out a note for Bexy in her large, sometimes blocky, sometimes shaky script and grabbed her climbing gear.

The cat that had been dead asleep trilled quietly at her and rose to follow Gwyn out the window. Gwyn didn't want to get in trouble for being out of her room. Though she wasn't really sure if that was a rule or not.

Already warmed up from the excercises, she lightly jogged over to the Curtain Wall, a long, tall fortification that separated the palace grounds and royal woods from the rest of Corus.

Looking up, and up, at it, she grinned with anticipation. She hadn't climbed something this tall before, and wasn't even sure she could climb all the way up before she had to get back down safely to get ready for the day. But she was excited to try.

The cat was still following her, and had materialized on a fence post near by.

Gwyn growled at her, “I'm not going to fall. I have my safety gear with me. You don't need to fucking baby sit me just cause you got me help last winter.”

The cat answered in the infuriating way of the species: washing her tail.

Rolling her eyes, Gwyn focused back on the wall. It was far too high to throw her grappling hook up to the top. And there weren't any fixtures she could catch lower down. She grabbed the grappling hook and the long coil of rope out of her climbing kit, along with the harness belt. She strapped on the harness around her waist and thighs, double backing on the belt to lock it in place. /Huh, that's sorta similar to how the girth on a horse's saddle gets looped around multiple times and tied around itself./

Then she focused on the pool of gift inside her. She gathered up a strand of her gift and launched it up to a battlement at the top of the wall with pinpoint accuracy. /If only I could shoot that well with a bow,/ she mused.

Gwyn attached the other end of the magical strand to her grappling hook to connect the hook and the top of the wall by her magic. Then she contracted the magical band, zooming the grappling hook up to the top of the wall, and made sure it latched securely. 

She sent a trace of her magic up through the rope to give her a warning if anyone touched it or started to cut it. Hopefully that would give her enough time to not fall to her death... eh. She'll risk it. Not like she hasn't died before.

She looped and secured the tail of the rope through her belay device attached to her harness, and fund her first arm and toe holds.

The rhythm of the climb was easy and familiar. Stretch a hand up to find a finger hold, shift her hips over to be close to the upstretched arm, relax there to tighten the belay line, then find toe holds a bit further up and stretch up her other arm. It was hard, but in a meditative way.  
The finger holds weren't very comfortable, but the wall was old, sturdy, and weathered enough to offer some secure holds. She knew the trick to long high climbs was to stay as relaxed and economical as possible. Using her legs to push herself up and just using her arms for leverage and balance.

Even at the easy pace, she was wondering if maybe she should just head back down. Her hands and toes burned with the friction of sticking to the wall, and her thighs were starting to go jelly and shake./ How high had she made it anyway?/  
Pretty damn far up./ Wow./ Gwyn grinned. The sky was lightening and she could see the palace glinting softly. Sections were lighted up with the servants and early risers getting ready for the day. It was really very pretty.

/If only I could draw or paint,/ she mused, when she felt her magic early notice alarm on her climbing rope go off. She looked up and saw the top of the wall was within shouting distance

“OI! I'm Climbing Here! And i'm a page, so don't mess with the fuckin rope!”

a silhouetted face peeked out over the battlement

“By Mithros, you are climbing. How astounding” came a faint reply.  
An arm waved down at her energetically, a louder call reached her

“Hullo! I'm also a page! Who might you be? Will you sponsor me my first year and teach me to climb like that?”

“Look. Can we chat later? Sorta in the middle of doing this.”

“oh! Could I assist you up? It's almost time for the wake up call to sound.”

Gwyn's pride kicked at her to say no. she can do this. She knew she could.  
But Kel, sir lady knight Kel, had advised her to make friends. And this person did seem friendly. Helping her up would equalize things between them. Plus he was a first year too. They'd have four years together.

“Hullo? Are you alright? I'm afraid I didn't hear your answer!” he called again

“right, yes. Don't move the hook! Just pull on the rope. And for fuck’s' sake don't go flying over the edge towards me. I don't think I can catch you. I'm gonna give you some slack to pull on. Hold on a moment.”

“understood!” came the cheery reply.

Her legs did feel better for the rest, but her fingers were not happy about starting up again. She climbed up to create some slack in her lead rope, and felt the slack tighten from the form up top pulling on it.

She tested the other page a bit with how much of her weight they could hold, and picked up the pace to reach the top.

She tried to toe hook the top of the wall, but it was far too wide to hook, so strained for a sec to get her knee up. A hand grabbed the back of her shirt and helped to haul her up and over.

They both collapsed at the top of the wall to collect themselves. He was the same dark skinned boy with glasses she had saw in the hallway last night, the one that liked architecture. He looked like he might need to grow into his forehead and ears, but had a strong jaw and perfectly set mouth.

Gwyn remembered herself to gasp a “Thanks”

“no trouble. That was very interesting! Can you teach me? Could you please?”

“uh... I haven't really taught anyone before. And i'm going to be a first year page myself. But I can show you some things if we both have free time together.”

“Splendid!”

“heh. Sure. I'm Gwyn, uh, Gwyndian of Heryse.”

“Gwydion of Haryse? Why ever do you go by Gwyn?”

“Gwydi-/an/. I'm a girl. I am named after an old folk hero I guess.”

“I say!”  
he sounded like she had told him she could fly or summon unicorns. She had expected him to sound more like he had stepped in horse dung. But she supposed his jubilant nature carried through to all things.

He seemed to require a response, so while she gathered her grappling hook and started coiling up her rope in a big loop from her hand to the back of her elbow she finally managed  
“i do say too.”  
that seemed to satisfy him, or prompted him he should say something next,  
“I'm Ahmond ibn Zahir. From Persopolis mostly. Though I've lived at the palace for a year or two before. It hasn't changed much though”

“hm. Long term memory huh?”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind. We should probably start heading back. What were you doing up here anyway?”

“Going for a run. It's wonderfully flat up here and the view is spectacular. My father said his training master as a page would run up here every day to build up his lungs.”

“Uh huh. That’s a good idea. Good for you.”

they helped each other up to standing, both wincing as muscles complained.

They made it to the top of the stairs when the bell to wake the palace tolled.  
“Fuck, we're going to be late”

“Such language!” again, he seemed delighted instead of outraged. She wondered just what kind of childhood he had had to get him so excited about everything he seemed to see. But not the time for that now.

She wanted to jump from stair level to stair level, going down in short falls, but she wasn't sure if it would be smart to push herself after that climb just yet, and leaving the chipper Ahmond behind didn't seem right just now either.

She let him set the pace, and he took the stairs in a smooth practiced dribble. Not as fast as Gwyn's preferred controlled fall, but quick and quiet.

When they reached the bottom, he nearly sprinted across the lawn back to the pages quarters, a more direct route than she had taken over here earlier in the night.

She could barely keep up for the first half, and flagged behind the second half. He surprised her by waiting for her at the entrance to the page quarters.

She greeted with a wheeze,  
“Do they breed horses down south or fucking breed with horses? Holy shit you're fast”

Ahmond flashed a smile and his glasses twinkled in the dawn light  
“I like to run. This level ground is much easier than sand dunes”

They were only 4 rooms away from each other, and he waved enthusiastically after he unlocked his door “best of luck Page Gwyn”  
She was still gasping after the sprint, so limply waved back “you too”

Bexy had all her clothes ready as well as water for a bath. But she also had a stern look and waved the note under Gwyn's ear as she came inside her room.

“Gone to climb curtain wall. Have kit. Will be safe. The cat seems like she'll follow me and let you know if something goes wrong?! How is this a note!”

g\Gwyn stripped off her sweaty things, “it's written down” in a calm tone that she knew would set Bexy off more

“Written down? Written down?! So are suicide notes, and at least those would include an I love you and tell me how to dispose of your rotting corpse that they had to scrape off the ground!”

Not sure how much time she had, Gwyn didn't bother floating water up with her gift, but soaked a cleaning cloth in water and scrubbed the sweat off her while standing in the tub with that as she weathered the loving concern of her maid

“I couldn't sleep” she explained blandly

“You could have slept for eternity!”

“I'm not going to fall to death, my dear Bexy. If anything i'll probably drown with my phobias.”

“Don't sweet talk me! And don't give me ideas for how to murder you, missy!”

Gwyn scrubbed the bar of soap everywhere and turned to gesture at her back,  
“Could you get my back for me please?”

“Are you seriously asking favors from me when i'm trying to yell at you?”  
Bexy snarled and snatched the soap out of Gwyn's hand and went to scrubbing very hard. Gwyn tried not to sigh happily. The pressure helped loosen some tense knots in her back from the long climb.

“yes?” Gwyn added extra meekness to her reply.

“you're lucky I adore you and you're not dead. Or else I would kill you”

“I understand. And i'm sorry I scared you. I felt like the walls were closing in on me here last night.”  
the apology and admission, and the stress relief from shouting at her young lady, seemed to calm Bexy down some.

“did you sleep at all? Is that cot not comfortable?”

“It's fine. I'm just nervous. Now that i'm here, it seems weird to... hm.” Gwyn wasn’t sure how to put this feeling,  
“ To be with so many young people. Be one of them.“

A freshly soaked cleaning cloth rinsed off the soap and she gritted her teeth to rinse off her hair in a big bucket dump that splashed uncomfortably over her face.

“Nonsense. You're perfectly fine. You learn quick. The people who don't seem awkward in their first year are probably just faking it anyway.”

“I did meet a first year, up on the wall. He was running along it while I was climbing. I think we might have things to talk about. He likes buildings.”

“Heh, and you like to climb them? Match made by the gods” Bexy taunted and handed Gwyn a towel

“I dunno if it would be much of a match, I'd guess he's the son of a pretty important and noble Bazhir knight.”

“And the Haryse's aren't important and noble? Perhaps Stefan should talk with this sir father of his”

“Bexy, no.”

“Bexy yes!”

“By fucking fire you'll be the death of me. I'm sure”

Bexy hugged her “I expect an audible notice as well as a written one next time you think you need to go out. “

“Yes mistress” Gwyn teased. And added more sincerely,  
“I might make it a habit to go out to train before dawn. But I'Ill leave notes and knock on your door when I leave.”

“good. Now get dressed Page! Zero days till training!”

they grinned at each other and Gwyn set to.

The hose, shirt and tunic wear for pages hadn't changed in a few generations. The earrings Gwyn had been wearing for a year, gold hoops with citrine and garnets, matched the gold tunic and red shirt and hose perfectly.

She checked the set of her belt on her hips, and then her face for any blemishes, and saw just a couple, thankfully just along her hairline and under her jaw and not on her nose for once. 

When she checked the blemishes under her jaw, she noticed her scars for the first time in a while. Only a couple showed above the tunic and shirt. One was flat and wide, shiney and tight looking, but pretty short. Gwyn couldn’t remember exactly what it was caused by in particular. Probably a scrape. The other was thin, faintly puckered, and dented the skin of the back of her neck up an inch into her hair line. That scar reached down and joined a network of them at her right shoulder and upper back. From there, more scars decorated her arms, ribs, lower back and down her thigh. There were others scattered around. The right side of her body had taken the brunt of whatever damage she had taken in the shipwreck. 

She winked at her reflection. She had survived, and gone from that horrible hospital room to the palace. That was a huge win already for her.  
Brown eyes with glints of green near the pupil set in a warm toned face looked back. Stern eyebrows, a strong jaw and thick cleft chin made her look unforgiving.

But the full pout of a mouth nearly always stretched back in any smile from bland, to smirk, to grimacing grin, maybe even rasping laughter, gave the face some soft life. Her wire rimmed glasses made her look more bookish and fragile as well.

She scrubbed a hand through her short auburn hair, barely two finger widths long all over, and it settled from towel tousled to the normal swirl around her scalp.

Her breasts and hips had started to develop with a vengeance, so now she wasn't just relying on the jeweled earrings to hint that she wasn't a rather homely boy. But now it was clear she was a girl that could just muster the description handsome, and not really hope for much else.  
That suited Gwyn just fine.


	4. In Which our Hero has a First Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> self harm CW  
> Gwyn makes some new friends  
> Has An Argument  
> Meets the King in Unfavorable Circumstances
> 
> cast:  
> Gwyn, 3rd year page Ermengarde of Tirragen, Ahmond, 4th year page Hassam ibn Hakim, 2nd year Gareth "third" of Naxen, 4th year page Tieren of Queenscove, 4th year Joaquin of Richcaffery, 1st year Dorian of Kennan, Sir haMinch, High Duke Gareth of Naxen, (ok this cast idea was fun at first and now it's just like... too long. she meets a lot of people all at once. grumble.) Numair, Queensnake, the Shang Wasp, 3rd year Ivan of Veldine, Professor Maura of Dunlith, Professor Flintseed, Squire Laurence of Port Legann, King Jonathan the fourth

She opened her door and stood legs wide, arms behind her back with her weight in her toes. Just like Corel stood when he was waiting on her or trying to look casual. As much as she wanted to be moving, pages were supposed to wait by their doors on the first day. Ahmond was fidgeting with his glasses a few doors down and waved with a grin. She waved back, unsure of what else to do.

The door opposite her opened and an angel stepped out.  
White blond hair was gathered up in a high and long pony tail. She was half a head shorter than Gwyn and her features were perfectly proportioned in a dark skinned, rose petal shaped face.

/Oh help,/ gwyn thought to no one in particular. /She's far too pretty/.  
Aquamarine eyes scorched Gwyn's face into a blush.

Leftover dregs of the interaction with Ahmond surfaced and gwyn lifted her hand again in a wave, mouth stretching in a smile she hoped wasn't a leer.  
“Hey”

this seemed to be the wrong thing to say, the beauty's face became full of skepticism.

Luckily, Gwyn was saved from more of this as Sir haMinch came around the corner, leading a few other children all in gold and red. They stopped at Ahmond's door for him to introduce himself, and then the training master asked for volunteers to be his sponsor. Quickly, a tall boy, with black skin that gleamed cool blue undertones in the light stepped forward. “Excuse me Sir, Ahmond and I are second cousins. I'd like to sponsor him.”

“Very well, Ahmond ibn Zahier, your sponsor will be Hassam ibn Hakim

/Oh help me/, gwyn thought again. /He's too pretty/. His black curly hair added a few more inches in height that his coltish legs didn't really need the assistance with. His eyes were almond shaped, and his high cheekbones and long face created a smooth plane of cheek and jaw that looked like it belonged on the statue of royalty.

/Why are there so many pretty people?/ Gwyn wondered. /I've never noticed them like this before. All at once. Maybe it's the clothes. Or the excitement of the day./

Ahmond joined the procession, and they stopped at another page's door. He was muscled and had pale scars along his tanned hands that hinted at combat. He introduced himself and simply joined the procession. /An older page/, Gwyn supposed.

At her door now, Sir haMinch bid the girl opposite to introduce herself first.

“Ermengarde of Tirragen” her voice was like her eyes, cool and bright.

With a nod, the training master gestured that she should join up with the small crowd at his back.  
Then his odd silvery blue eyes met hers, and asked her to introduce herself

She squared her shoulders against it with a grim smile and answered  
“Gwydian of Haryse, sir.”

“Haryse is a first year page. Who will sponsor her first year of training?”

The boys all eyed Ermengarde, expecting her to volunteer. She seemed to resent the assumption with her glares back.

“I do not enjoy waiting, pages.” the training master warned.

“I will” the speaker came from the back of the group. He sounded exasperated. Gwyn hoped it was with this pecking order business and not with shouldering the extra duty of being her sponsor.

He had a limp mop of curly dark red hair, round faced, and didn't seem athletic at all. 

“Gareth of Naxen will be your sponsor then.”  
Gwyn blinked. /Wasn't' that the guy that had sponsored Alanna of Trebond?/

Gareth came up to her to shake her hand. He had calluses on his hands, but they too  
had extra padding on them she didn't expect from the very active pages.

“Please call me Third. It gets confusing with father and grandfather still living in the palace as well.” His small black eyes twinkled as he smiled. 

/Oh. that would explain it. A scion of the family/. She tried not to think this was an omen of her success just yet. It was only the first day.

“Nice to meet you. I like to go by Gwyn myself.”

“this isn't a social party.” Sir haMinch broke in, “let's continue on.”

More pretty people joined. Including the willowy Tieren of Queenscove. She had Yamani tilted eyes and small flat nose, Gwyn assumed from her mother Yukimi, with her father's green eyes. Her hair cut to the length of her earlobes.

They gathered up everyone finally, and headed down to the training dining hall.

Gwyn made sure to load up on the meats available, but was astonished when whole roasted fish were sitting next to her expected ham and beef sausage. They stank in the mineral oily way only fish could. She made sure to keep an eye out for any other ocean tainted food stuffs

Gareth the Third bid her to sit with him, at the table where Gwyn was introduced to Joaquinof Richcaffery, a 4th year, his own sponsored page Dorian of Kennan, and to Gwyn's delight, the two other lady pages, Ermengarde and Tieren. Tieren had a plate full of all the things Gwyn had shunned, roasted fish, a murky soup with seaweed, and a rice, seaweed and shredded salted fish concoction.

The table went silent as she and Third sat down. Gwyn covered her self consciousness with a cocky smile then braved to break the silence after a sip of heavily honeyed tea,  
“I wish they had coffee to drink here. It seems to be magically wakeful.”

Dorian, who looked particularly bedraggled seemed very interested  
“More than tea?” he asked hopefully

“Well I think so. It certainly tastes stronger. I got some from the Riverside Cafe in Corus this winter. The owner said it was from Maren. Made like tea, but from a plant's beans instead of leaves. They also sweeten it and add some other spices to it. It's delightfully bitter”

Dorian nodded thoughtfully. “I'll have to try it. I can't deal with this up at dawn stuff.”

“If this drink does really make you more awake and alert,” Ermengarde added, “I don’t think it is seemly to have it. “

“Unseemly?” Gwyn scoffed lightly. “That’s a weird way to put it.”

“Unless you had enough to provide with other pages, it doesn’t seem fair.” the girl’s voice was mild, but she was staring like a challenge at Gwyn.

“I don’t have any control over what people eat or drink. That’s far-fetched. The drink is for sale in the city, and anyone with coin can buy the ingredients.”

“In any case,” Ermengarde argued further, “building endurance is part of a page’s training. Turning to drinks or potions to keep yourself going is detrimental to that training.”

gwyn nodded to herself. She was definitely besotted with this gorgeous girl; this girl had bedrock-firm morals. Even if they were just doing friendly banter, Gwyn felt delighted with the attention.  
Outwardly, gwyn started to shake her head and form a rebuttal. 

“And also,” Ermengarde continued without giving Gwyn time, “I am sure we're not allowed to wear jewelry in training. It's a hazard.”

Gwyn looked up and touched her earings with a sharp grin.  
“Anyone who would like ito is free to try to take them off me. But i've got layers of protections on these things. I wouldn't suggest it.”

“So you admit you're using them to give yourself an edge with your gift? As if your being an older page didn't already give you an edge?”

“Oh no, i'm admitting they are a trap for people to fall into when fighting me. If some poor fuck grabs one thinking they can rip it out of my ear to hurt me, they're not going to be very happy with the result. I don't get any benefit from them intrinsically.  
“Plus people could say your long hair is just as much something easily exploited during combat.”

“I don't keep my hair long just to harm people that would grab it. Yet you admit those decorations are traps for others.” aqua eyes snapped along with her tone.

Gwyn kept her smile sharp and her tone bland,  
“would you like to? I could make a hair tie or some clips that would turn the tables on someone who thought they had you by the hair”

“As if i'd go into combat with my hair free or grabable for the enemy.”

“if you say so. But the offer's open. I like enchanting things.”

Ermangarde looked like she could argue for days, but Tieren interrupted by setting a glass of juice in front of her

“You have the gift then? You'll be studying in class with Joaquin and myself,” she indicated the oldest page  
“Professor Yates keeps things fairly interesting. Though we haven't done much at all with enchanting. Is that like making bespoke magic anyone can use, gift or no?”

Gwyn was sad to switch gears, but chatting about magic was fun too.  
“Yeah. A lot like. It takes a lot of time to set up usually, unless you only want it lasting for only couple days to a week. Probably not a lot of use in uh, combat situations. Not like evocation or abjuration.

Third looked over to Dorian,  
“There go the mages with their long words again.”

“Spare me,” the black haired and freckled boy answered, “You don't hear yourself in history and law class. Talk about polysyllabic and nitpicky”

This seemed to fall back into a familiar pattern of complaining about various classes and teachers, which Gwyn listened to for pointers and advice. Without much to add, she looked around for Ahmond, and found him with his gorgeous and tall sponsor at a nearby table, the young boy was waving his hands around while talking more than he was eating.

After a while, when more talking than eating was going on for everyone, Sir haMinch stood up and the hall fell silent, except for Ahmond still talking excitedly about a bridge's construction going up. Hassam elbowed him to get him to notice the head of the table.

“Today is your last free day before training starts in earnest tomorrow. I expect sponsors to familiarize the new pages to the areas of the castle they will need to know for training. Starting tomorrow, veteran pages will be wearing weighted harnesses.” small moans escaped a few of the older pages' throats.

“Some changes have been added to the training schedule:  
“A shang warrior has volunteered some of her time to training the pages in hand to hand combat.  
“Sir Kelandry of Mendolin will be training the veteran pages in spear training to replace staff training.”

Gwyn started and nearly jumped on the table to whoop and dance before remembering that she wasn't a senior page, so would only get to watch from afar. /That was still closer than I ever expected to be/, she consoled herself.

“Professor Shirai of Carthac's magical university, and Master Numair will be assisting Professor Yates and Tkaa in magical and immortal studies.

“For the new pages, I'll run down through what is expected of you here, and to remind the older pages:

“You will obey the orders of the knights and nobles here at the palace quickly with respect. This will not excuse you from being late to any of your normal page duties however. We expect you to be able to do both in a timely fashion, failure to do so will result in punishment work.  
“You will be training your body in the morning by learning basic athletics and various martial skills: Hand to hand combat, polearm, sword, ranged weapons, horsemanship, mounted combat, and lance work.

“In the afternoons you will be learning Tortall law and history, literature and literacy in both common tongue and Yamani tongue, mathematics and quartermastery, studying the gift for those who have it or lessons on magical effects and immortals, lessons on plant and animal life, and finally courtly etiquette and arts.

The evenings after supper will be used for study and additional lessons or work deemed necessary by your instructors. Sundays we will attend dawn service at the temple of Mithros in the temple district. Any rule infractions will be addressed after the service. If you have earned the privilege, you may be granted leave to visit the city of corus.

“Visiting the city when you have not been given leave will be punishable. Fighting hand to hand or with weapons outside of training lessons is a punishable offence. Being late to lessons, or staying up after lights out is called is a punishable offence. Being in the room of another page or squire with the door closed is a punishable offence. Drinking alcohol or imbibing drugs deemed intoxicating will have your status as a page or squire come under question. Bullying or tormenting a fellow page or squire is a punishable offence. Purposefully harming any animal, well, I would say it's a punishable offence, but i'm not sure if there would be much left of you to punish. 

“You are expected to keep your person and equipment clean and well mended. Only in the case of emergency will you see a palace healer without permission from an instructor. You are not to see any healers other than professional palace healers. Don't doubt that your instructors won't hear of any infractions. With the palace as it is now, we don't require any pages or squires to come to us to hear what is going on.

“We are training you to be the best of the best. The best fighters, the best scholars, and the best keepers of morality and the law of the land. You are welcome to leave if this becomes too much for you. There are plenty of opportunities for the bright people you have demonstrated yourselves to be by being accepted to this training. You are dismissed.”

“daaaang he's intense and scary” gwyn whispered to Third.

“his family is descended from the first Lord Provost of Tortall. They don't mess around with rules and regulations.”

“Alright then Third. What's next?” Gwyn felt pumped up and ready for anything.

\--------

Next was putting up their trays from breakfast, and a tour. She learned the squires' general rooms were the floor above the pages'. Some knight masters had their squires quarters in another section of the palace. Many other squires were on the road learning things first hand along with their knight masters.

The teachers and other staff for the pages were in another section of the palace, near the classrooms and the classroom library. The Palace Library was in a completely different section of the palace. But Third made sure to show her that.

“It's my favorite place in the whole world” he explained

She could see why. Golden oak shelving stretched up and up. Three layers of cat walks split up the high walls to make the heights reachable. There was a general reading area by the librarian's desk, and doors lead off to more specialized collections of documents and private reading rooms.

Third knocked on one private reading room, even though the small brass plaque on the door requested no interruptions. The smoked glass window set into the door showed light coming from inside.. He let himself in without waiting for a delayed “yes?”

A big man, without being particularly tall or fat, heavy set with muscle and a large dark grey beard looked up from a multitude of books and scrolls

“Father, this is Gwyndian of Haryse, a first year page i'm sponsoring. Gwyn, this is my father, Duke Gareth the second.”

“Royal advisor to the king.” Gwyn finished for Third, bowing to the older man,  
“sorry for the interruption, your grace”

“It's quite all right. I’m used to it from Gareth. A bit old for a page, aren't you, Haryse? Haryse... oh yes, there was that tragedy two years back. Understandable that things like training were delayed. I'm sorry for your loss. Your father was a good friend of mine.”

Gwyn shrugged uncomfortably, then straightened up, embarrassed at the casual motion. Her steward claimed the royal advisor was a genius.  
/Stefain would have kittens to meet him in his study,/ Gwyn thought. /I'll have to write him and brag./

“Thank you for the kind words, your grace. I uh, don't remember much of him myself. Memory loss.”

The duke made a sympathetic noise and sucked on his teeth.  
“you're more than welcome to call on me, for advice about how to handle this one” he indicated Third with a quill, “or just a game of chess or book recommendation.”

/Fucking gold mine/, gwyn thought as she bowed low enough to hide her face.  
“It would be my honor, your grace.”

 

Third, bless him, reached up and clapped a hand on her shoulder.  
“Gwyn here has some of that coffee you were talking about. Got it from Riverside Cafe she says.”

The duke's eyes gleamed hungrily  
“That stuff is worth it's weight in gold to my staff. I take it as a positive mark you also seemed hooked on it.”

“Oh yes, your grace. I was telling the breakfast table about it. Some were wondering if they might be able to sample some at breakfast tomorrow.”

“Oh i'm sure that can be arranged.” the greying duke waved a hand easily.  
“I've noticed you do get a wicked headache if you're on the road and don't have any for a couple days. So do keep the use moderate. Don't want Padraig hearing that and thinking it might be negatively intoxicating.”

“Thank you, your grace” gwyn was starting to feel like a parrot, saying the same thing over and over. “I'll keep it in mind.”

“Keep up the good work Gareth”

“I will father.”

“Good man.”  
it seemed like a ritual dismissle and without further ceremony Third showed her out and back into the glorious library.

/The library is prettier than anyone i've seen today gwyn mused to herself I think duke gary has the right of it, spending tons of time here, or enough that his son knows where to find him automatically/

The place they visited next was the great dining hall, where Third explained pages served at midwinter festivities, and at the Yamani's new year festival for the lunar calendar.

He giggled and told horror stories of slip ups and embarrassing mistakes people had made last year, as many about him as anyone else. It seemed a badge of courage to have survived making a mistake during these important festivals. Gwyn had been at both of these two winters ago, and assured him that she hadn't noticed anything go afoul as one of the guests.  
“Well that was before I came along. Surely you would have noticed then.” Third declared. 

Finished with seeing indoor places, they braved the hot September air to visit the stables Gwyn had spent so much time at yesterday. Then the pollocks for horsemanship training and mounted combat. the tilting yard, the archery ranges, and finally back around closer to the palace for the outdoor and indoor training yards. Wooden circles and lanes were placed on hard packed earth. 

And there were a good share of other sponsor and first year pages going over this area. Gwyn couldn't help but smile with excitement. She was finally here. This is where she'd prove herself to herself. She was determined to make it. And her first day was already going pretty well.

By lunchtime, Gwyn was itching to go and do something. To start training. She wanted to do all the training right now. Learn now. Another half day of waiting after so long seemed torturous.

She made sure to sit by Ahmond for this meal, and Third sat with her to talk with Hassam about how they definitely weren't going to get stuck with hours of makeup work for mathematics this year.

She let Ahmond's chatter wash over her, passively soaking up tidbits here and there. She asked for details when he started critiquing the different architecture styles around the palace. He seemed to notice everything around him and love talking about it. She asked if he had seen the royal library, and let herself be talked into asking Third to take her and the Bazhir pair of pages there.

At the library after lunch, Ahmond finally seemed to have nothing to say. Gwyn was sure that was temporary till he digested it and he'd be reporting about it to anyone that cared to listen for the rest of the night.

Gwyn went up to the librarian at the desk and asked if there was a section for mage work. The answer that there were several delighted her. With the Royal University just out of Corus city limits the Royal library had access to all sorts of magical texts.

The books of the Royal Library were limited to use while inside the library without written permission, and Gwyn wondered how many games of chess she'd need to play with Duke Gary to get a carte blanche allowance for the library.

She walked about and found the other three pages in various places around the three levels of books. Ahmond seemed to want to read every title personally, the other two had picked out some volumes and were perusing while Gwyn and Ahmond satisfied their curiosities.

As the second bell of the afternoon tolled, Gwyn went to Third and and asked him if there was anything she should make sure she had before the term started.

“I needed plenty of bandages last year. With not supposed to see healers without healers, we all got lots of practice with minor first aid last year.”

“Oh good to know. I should stock up then.”

He offered to show her the stockrooms for that, and go by the healers with her to make sure she knew where that was while he was at it.

Hassam dragged Ahmond out to do the same, clearly not wanting to wait around the library without someone less excitable to talk with.

The healer on duty seemed prepared for the request, and had rolls of bandage, a bottle of wound cleaner, and a pot of something to ease bruises in bags. They were told if something didn't stop bleeding after an hour, or was bleeding in strong spurts instead of just oozing, that this constituted an emergency. The same applied if a wound started to change color, grow red streaks out from it, or if they lost function in a limb. A couple other things like vomiting blood, and other severe bodily responses were classified as emergencies. They were lectured not to use medical emergencies to escape from classes, but also to not let the teachers stop them from coming to the healers if something like that was to happen.

The healer seemed to notice Gwyn's earrings and breasts with a frown. Like she didn’t much appreciate girls as pages. 

“Here's some extra bits of padding for your monthlys if they're to start this year. Make sure to eat plenty of dark green vegetables and meat, else your blood may thin out too much and lead to dizzy spells. Come see us if your monthlies are lasting longer than a week, or coming more often than once every three weeks mind.”

Gwyn took the extra bundle with thanks. There was also a small bag of familiar smelling tea that Bexy used to ease her own cramps that came with the whole uncomfortable sounding affair. Gwyn was happy hers hadn't happened yet. If it never came she’d be just fine with that.

They headed back to the pages wing, where a page with long black hair and warm, medium brown skin hailed the group. Gwyn thought he looked famliar and tried to remember him from all the other new people she had met in the day.  
/He was one of the older pages.. Joaquin, that’s right. A fourth year i think, and sponsoring a kid with freckles. We had breakfast together/

He called,  
“A few of us were going to the practice courts to brush up on some things, do a small tournament or something. Want to join?”

Gwyn thought the idea was perfect. She'd get to burn off her nerves and see how well her preparation training had done. Third opted out, saying he wanted to relax like a sane person before going back to the trainings.

The large crowd of interested pages changed into the set of beige and tan practice clothes they were issued. Tan breeches under brown boots, and long beige shirt belted at the waist. This felt much more comfortable to Gwyn than the hose and slippers the formal attire included.

The miniature tournament was a delight. Gwyn's extra size and training with Corel gave an advantage for hand to hand and sword work. Though there were some complaints that she wasn't sword fighting properly.  
This was true, she had used the maneuvers for knife fighting and only adapted her reach for the longer blade. It wasn't as elegant and proper looking as the style the other pages used, but she did do pretty well in the bouts, if only because they didn't know quite how to defend against the new style.

Staff fighting she held her own, but was amazed at the skill difference between even a fourth year and a second year. She was excited to learn how to do that well here at the palace.

Archery was well, embarrassing. She hit someone else's target before she hit her own, just on one edge. Every other shot in the two rounds she was in missed.

Some gifted students that were around, Tieren, Joaquin, Vance of Fenrigh, Justin of Disarth and herself had their own competition. The group made minor illusions, raced objects they levitated and split wood into kindling. 

Gwyn's illusions were small things. She made a multicolored bird with long plumage that was only the length of her hand. Not very impressive like Justin's ruby red willow tree that moved in the breeze, or Tieren's jade-green ogre that did a little jig. 

She rocked the levitation race, Joaquin was the only real competition there, and him a fourth year page. Gwyns practice every day at levetating water made moving a rock easy.

Splitting logs wasn't something she had tried before, so it took her a long while to puzzle out how she would do it. It seemed like the others had no problem chopping them with invisible axes or somehow getting them to burst open from the inside.

They seemed just as puzzled by her difficulty in figuring it out as she was, and tried to offer advice. But she shushed them.She thought she had an idea. More even and controlled than an invisible ax chopping the wood up.

She drew out a cord of her gift from her interior reservoir, and split it into dozens of individual threads, she placed them in a grid pattern over the log, about half a finger's width apart. Then she strengthened the thread into wire: magical wire that could cut through wood like hot knife through butter and sent the grid down through the log. It took concentration to keep it moving straight up and down, but then it was finally through.

She sighed in exhilaration. She had figured out a nifty trick. She thought it was just like cutting up a block of stone into thin slabs for flag stones, but all at once, and then also cutting up the flag stones into thin planks for window sills or thresholds.

She rested her fists on her hips with satisfaction and looked around. The onlookers and other participants were looking at her oddly.

“You didn't do anything. Look, it's still all once piece.” someone called

She turned and grinned viciously, “oh? Is it?” with a flourish she flipped a hand into the log, and it tumbled apart into hundreds of evenly carved sticks. Like the spills used to light the candles in the temple of the Dark God.

Whistles came up and some claps. But the same heckler called again, She found him in the crowd, red hair and a mass of freckles on thick shoulders,  
“yeah well took you long enough”

Her grin took on a scimitar edge “I'd like to see you try, red.”  
People chuckled and the redhead threw his arms up in a rude gesture.  
Joaquin clapped her on the shoulder, “well, that was some fancy stuff, but you did totally lose. Even if it does look cool.”

she shrugged “don't mind. I'm here to learn, not be perfect all the time from the start.”  
/Though being perfect every time would be nice, and much less embarrassing / she thought.

By supper she was dragging and ready for bed. Third walked her through what would happen tomorrow and where she would go that she could repeat it all by memory. When she snarled as much to him, he grinned.  
“Good good. That's what I want to hear.”

Vance sat next to them at supper, along with some other pages she knew she should know, but couldn't' muster up the memory to place their names.

He kept glancing at her when she would talk, but seemed uninterested in what she and the pages were talking about. Finally he asked,  
“do you smoke? Or were you in a fire or something?”

“eh?” gwyn certainly hadn't been prepared for this sort of question.

“your voice, my grandma's voice was like that. She smoked a pipe. And i've heard some people that were in house fires get that way for a while.”

“oh. Uh, Duke Baird said I had scarring on my voice box. He wasn't quite sure what it was caused by. My guess was drowning.”

Third boggled at her  
“Drowning?!”

ugh. This was not a thing she wanted to talk about.  
“forget I said anything”

“but -”

“no. forget it. Right now.” she ordered as she enhanced to rasp to her voice and lowered it an octave. She did not want to talk about this today. And she was not above scaring this nice young man into dropping the subject.

“mithros I only meant-”

she cut him off again.  
“i know what you meant. And I appreciate the sentiment of concern. But it was a long time ago and it really sucked and I don't. Want. To talk. About it.”  
she sighed.  
“It was shitty of me to snap at you though.”

He blinked, clearly put off by this exchange.  
“yeah. It was.”

people started talking of other things as Third and Gwyn sat in silence for a bit.  
She wasn't sure what to do with his calm acceptance that she had hurt him. The acknowledgement without anger or backlash was different than any other argument she'd been in. This made her feel more on edge, and she kept wondering if he was going to plot her demise later, so he was calm now. But third seemed too kind and laid back for that to be right. Perhaps he was just giving her time to cool down. 

“Sorry” she murmured softly

“Pain makes people foolish sometimes. I’d rather you not take it out on me?”

“I'd rather not take it out on anyone.” Gwyn admitted.

“I'll forgive you this time.”

She was grateful for both of the clauses of that sentence. She didn't want her temper to always win between them. But she hated to have fucked up so badly the first day.

After dinner she waited for Third by his room till he came back for the evening.  
“thanks for showing me around. You did great as a sponsor.”

“That’s my job. But why are you here? You still feeling bad about dinner? Chill your self, ok? We're fine, you and me.”

“uh... thanks. That's not all I meant by that though. I meant the whole day.”

“sure sure. Nothing to worry about. You'll need your sleep. I'd go to bed early if I were you.”

“gotcha. See you.”

\---  
She was sure she couldn't sleep. The new camping bed was awkward, and she felt too keyed up. However, she woke up to the sound of a kettle boiling  
Bexy must have noticed Gwyn waking up, and called softly “Good morning my lady, first day of training in the practice yards! All your clothes are ready, and I've just put coffee on.”

“Bless you with all the good in the world, Bexy.”

“Now now my lady, you and I both know that you meant that for the coffee.  
“You must remember to drink plenty of water today. Mustn't pass out with all the work you'll be doing.”

Gwyn rolled over the edge of the cot and almost forgot about the short drop that hadn't existed with just her pad.

She started her normal exercises for the morning. Press ups and dips, lunges and a challenging sort of sit-up. Those last exercises that made her middle burn as she held her legs braced against the window sill and raising her shoulders up to look out the window, and then back down to touch the wall under the window.

Muscles fully woken up, she enjoyed a quiet, tiny cup of coffee with Bexy, each sitting at a desk.

Gwyn helped get cups and shiney copper pot cleaned and placed back in their proper places above the mantle,

“I'm gonna go for a run I think, before the dawn bell.”

“Then i'll see you when you get back, my lady page”

They shared smiles. Gwyn thought she might like another cup of coffee and to talk about the astonishingly good looking people at the castle. But she knew the wisdom of working even when she didn't feel like it. Working/ especially/ when she didn't feel like it.

So she bustle out the window and jogged easily along to the wall. She told herself she'd run up the stairs to run the wall and back some other day, for now she wanted to try her hand at climbing up along the bannisters inside the stairwell.  
It was a much easier climb than yesterday, though her shoulders and legs weren't quite sure if they liked this. She grinned and told herself she didn't need to like it, and embraced the pain to fuel her on.

She stretched at the top of the wall. Easing tight muscles into trusting her that she would take care of them.

Then Gwyn ran a steady rhythm of sprinting till she was breathless and jogging till swallowing between breaths didn't seem impossible. She met Ahmond coming back from the far side of the wall. He was looking in concentration at the pave stones in front of him. Gwyn circled around him as he came past her, and then kept pace at his side. He looked over and winked at her as they pounded steadily toward the staircase.

They stopped and gwyn stretched again as Ahmond paced to cool down his breathing gently.  
“want to learn how to go down stairs the fast way?” Gwyn offered

“this isn't the part where you push me down them, is it?”

“course not. But we're gonna take it a bit easy, don't want us twisting our ankles this morning out of all mornings.”

She showed him how to vault over the banister, to go from the last step in set to the first set in the next set of stairs without wasting time on the landings.  
“the fast way is to just do this from the middle of the stairs, dropping down a flight at a time, but it can get kinda risky.”

“it sounds exhilarating!”

“well, not as much fun as jumping from roof to roof, but yeah, it's fun.”

“that is also something you must show me!”

“Sure. It’s really fun. I’d be happy to teach you.”

Ahmond jogged at what was probably an easy pace for him, but even with her longer legs, Gwyn found herself struggling to keep up. /He's got to have some trick to this that I don't know./ They got back to the page's wing as the first bell of the morning banged, and they high fived in congratulations for making it back on time.

The breakfast table was quiet, but thrummed with nervous energy. All the first years seemed to have gravitated toward each other in anxious comradery.  
Gwyn had to prompt Ahmond to eat more than a couple bites of his rice and coconut dish.

There was indeed coffee available, it had its own little table by the long buffet tables holding the entrees. Gwyn closed her eyes to savor her second cup of the morning.  
“Third, is it too soon to say that I really love, admire, and respect your father?”

“Uh… why?” Third was still half focused on his plate of eggs and toast. 

“Coffee, young man, precious coffee.”

\---  
The first hour of training was spent in what sir padraig called conditioning. The other pages called it hell. It involved lots of what Gwyn already did each morning. There were drills in running, tumbling and learning to take falls well, working muscles in each part of the body, and group competitions to move piles of rice bags from one side of the grounds to the other.

Gwyn managed to be paired with Ahmond, a second year page named Leopold, and the tall redheaded heckler from yesterday, Ivan.

It was almost like cheating. One person from each team would carry a heavy bag over to the other end of the yard, set it down, then run back and tag the next person in line. Since they were first years, ahmond and Gwyn went first and second. Ahmond took precious seconds to settle the heavy weight on his shoulders, but made up with the lag with a inspiring sprint. Gwyn slapped Ivan’s hand before any other team got their second bag over to the far end of the yard.  
Ivan ran with the heavy bag like it was full of feathers, and their team competed the challenge well ahead of anyone else.

Next was hand to hand combat.  
The Shang Wasp, fionna, looked more like a butterfly from far away. She was dressed in loose, fluttery clothing that played with the wind. That was distracting enough, but the jewel bright blues, reds, oranges, and purples in the cloth topped it off. As the pages approached the area of the practice yard she was in, Gwyn noticed it seemed her hair was tightly braided in swirls and rows along her scalp. /Seems like a lot of work to do, but wouldn't give you much trouble in a fight/. She thought.

"Hullo my duckies." She chimed, "you senior pages get in rows and go through the first through fifth drill. If I catch anyone falling over at the side kick, I'll have you standing on one leg for the rest of the hour."

“Now then, you first years, come with me and I'll show you some basics.” she took off the outer shirt she was wearing. Underneath was a sleeveless shirt just as flowing and colorful, and dark, swirling, beautiful tattoos

There was a whimper from someone, and Ahmond elbowed her in the ribs,  
“Gwyn don't be rude”  
/oh shit, she thought, the whimpering was me/.  
“i can't really help it,” gwyn replied to him, “she's so beautiful. Those tattoos. Those muscles”  
The tattoos swirled up her neck and gwyn realized what she thought was hair was in fact tattoos along a shaved head.

 

Gwyn was familiar with Corel's boxing style. Fists held up at shoulder width beside the head and punches were powered forward through the legs and hips.

The shang Wasp had them settle down into a low, wide legged stance "Like riding a horse, don't you see' and punching with fists starting down low by the hip. They drilled there while she and Sir haMinch went up and down the line; correcting stances and having pages punch the trainers' palms to test they had the right form.

Then they drilled in the block to that punch, using the forearm to lever the attacking punch up above your head, and hopefully leaving an opening for you to attack back into.

A grueling half hour of staying in the same low stance later, she let them pair up to practice with one another.

This wasn't too bad, Gwyn thought, though her legs were threatening to turn to jelly like they did during a long climb. What the older pages were doing looked much more interesting. Sets of strikes, blocks and counterstrikes.

Next lesson was staff training, and Gwyn didn't try to hide her grin at sir Kel as the lady knight lead away the older pages for advanced staff and spear work.

Again they were shown a stance, and 3 simple attacks paired with 3 simple counters. Gwyn itched to do more advanced things, but from yesterday she knew she should pay attention to what she was doing. There were already some first year pages better at the staff than she was, and she was determined to catch up the proper way, not leap ahead only to fall on her face.

Buoyed by the doing well with the basics with the first three hours, Gwyn was optimistic about archery. Maybe she wouldn't do as badly as yesterday's mini tournament. They seemed to just be doing the introductory steps to each fighting style.

Once more the -, gwyn hesitated to say older as some were her age or younger Thet senior pages set to their own practice. They seemed to be dragging and quite a few cursed the weighted harnesses senior pages wore under their breath.

Sir padraig demonstrated how to string a bow, looping a hoop of the bowstring to the bottom notch in the bow, then stretching the string up while compressing the bow staff into a curve and hey presto, the stick and string were now a bow and arrow. 

Most of the pages took this in with impatience, having done all this before. Gwyn knew that is how bows work, but hadn't really ever needed to do it for herself before. Hunting just didn't happen in cities, and rocks were the projectile of choice.

She set to getting the loop of the string around the notch in the bowstave, holding the bow in place with a boot, and levering down while stretching the string.  
It was tough. She was really surprised by how boys younger, thinner, and shorter than her already had their bows strung. 

She gritted her teeth into a grin and bore down on the bowstave. Almost there. The free loop and notch were a couple fist widths from each other. Her arms were shaking from the strain when the bowstave snapped, and she punched herself in the thigh before she could correct her momentum.  
Shards of bow went flying out away from her. The snapping, shattering explosion made everyone in the yard jump and look around.

"Haryse, what by the gods?" The training master came over from doling out quivers of arrows.

"The bow snapped, sir" She reported, and went to pick up pieces of the weapon at her feet.

"I can see that, page. What were you doing to make it do that? Let me see those. He reached for the broken pieces and her bowstring.

He rubbed the wood and seemed to measure the string. And Gwyn decided not to answer the question he asked. It was probably rhetorical anyway.

"You inspected it before stringing?" This was certainly not rhetorical. His eerie pale eyes were glaring at her.

"Sir, yes sir. No chips or splinters in it, sir" that was probably too many sirs in one reply, but she was really distracted by how bad the punch to her thigh had hurt.

He ordered her to show him where she had gotten the stave from and the string from. It was just where the other pages had took their things from. 

He had her choose another set of equipment, they both seemed the same as she had chosen before. She made sure to inspect the length of the stave and the bowstring carefully while the training master watched. He didn't correct her with anything, so she went to string this one too. Her Thigh thrummed with anticipation of another hit, but she smiled to ignore it.

"Stop. Just. Stop." The training master huffed. And some pages sniggered before he set them to shooting at targets.

“Look at the length of your bowstring compared to the length of your bowstave.”

She looked. It seemed to be just like he had done when demonstrating.  
She looked back at him.  
"Yes sir?"

"What is wrong with it? What is wrong with your set up?"

She double checked again.  
"I don't know." She finally admitted.

"How many bows have you string in your life?"

Now that was just mean and shitty of him.  
Her brows snapped together, but she kept her tone the blank tone used in reports,  
"I do not know my lord. If I strung a bow before my parents perished, I wouldn't be able to tell you with my memory loss." Ok, so maybe not quite the proper tone.

He didn't soften from his reprimand out of sympathy though. Gwyn was half thankful for that.  
“This bowstring is too short. It's meant to be used for recurve bows. That's why it has those red reinforcement woven into the knots.”

there were definitely small threads of red silk woven into the string towards either end. She had noticed them, but taken them for normal.

“I didn't know that sir.”  
He eyeballed her, looking for sarcasm. Gwyn only felt embarrassed. No wonder the other pages had sniggered.

The training master handed her a quiver of arrows and a proper bowstring and headed down the line of pages to check their progress.. This time she easily looped the string over both ends securely, and hurried to the closest open spot in the line.

Ivan, her favorite heckler, was next to her, and murmured under his breath,  
"Hey, just to make sure. You hold the end with the feathers, not the pointy sharp end."

Gwyn punched him tidily in the ear.  
Ivan's oath from pain caught padraig's attention again. 

“Veldine! Watch your language"  
Gwyn set up with her target, squaring up to it and stepping one leg back so she presented just her side to it.

She drew and loosed.  
And missed completely.

She didn't fault Ivan for laughing at her this time or his comment about aiming with her arm, not her nose.

She tried correcting, and missed in the other direction this time.  
She wondered if she she should try to miss. Maybe then she could hit the target.

But that experiment ended up with the arrow thudding into the ground a scant two feet from her feet and then skipping over the hard packed dirt off to behind the target.

She took yet another steadying breath when the training masters sharp voice snapped right by her ear,  
"What in blazes do you call that Haryse? Hit the target with your next arrow or spend an hour after supper at this range for the next week" 

"Yes. Sir." She tried again at that steadying breath. Gripped the bow, focused with all her will, just short of using her gift, and loosed again.

The shot flew up over the target, and sunk squarely into the tall fence beyond the line of targets.

"Ivan," the trainer snapped, "laugh at one of your fellow pages efforts again and I'll have you out here to help Haryse and hold you accountable for her progress"

Ivan shut up with a quick "yessir"

"Gwydian, any arrow that does not end up in your target by the time you empty the quiver will be an extra two days of archery practice after supper."

"Understood sir"  
She looked down at her hip and did a quick count. She was looking at a month of remedial lessons if she missed all of these.  
After her third missed shot, she accompanied each slow and steady exhalation with soft growls and curses.

By the end of the hour, three weeks of extra archery practice were hers to cherish. The arrows that had hit her target seemed cockeyed and surprised by their placement. 

Still she tried to put this out of her mind. Training on Horseback was next, and she had to get to the stables as one of the first pages to pick her mount. With her inexperience, she couldn't trust chance and slim pickings to get a mount that she could ride well.

She carefully and properly stored each of her things in their proper places after cleaning them. Then she was off like a shot toward the stables.

Some of the other pages were already jogging along there, some older pages just walked and talked with their friends comfortably.  
Ahmond was lightly jogging just out of excitement it seemed.

Gwyn didn't want to waste time passing and weaving through the group of boys that lay ahead of her, so nimbly vaulted up along the wooden post fence that bordered the horse fields and ran full tilt along the fence.

She passed Ahmond who whooped at her and easily caught up and kept pace. He even chatted at her about how she was doing that without falling, and would he teach her?

she kept her breath for running, only returning a tight smile down at him from up on the fence. Gwyn had to focus to prevent her center of balance from hitching to the side as she looked at him.

They made it at the stables, gwyn blowing like bellows, Ahmond looking refreshed. She wondered if she would ever see him be tired.

To her relief, Toby was waiting for them. He looked amused at Gwyn's breathless state.  
“I see you made sure to come as quick as ya can.”

he raised his voice to reach the pages coming up behind them,

“Any horse with tack and grooming supplies hanging outside its stall is available for first year pages. Choose quickly mind, but well. They're gonna be your companions for four years.”

Gwyn scanned the stables and nearly fell with relief. Gloaming's stall had tack outside of it!

“If you have any questions, my name is Toby.” the stable master continued.

Gwyn walked as quickly as could be dignified toward Gloaming's stall. She didn't want to spook any of the horses by moving too fast when it wasn't an emergency.

She looked in at the horse, who swung around from the water bucket to hang her head outside the stall.  
“Hey, uh, hi. I'm the fool from yesterday. I was wondering if you would be alright with being my horsemanship partner while i'm a page? It should at least be amusing?”

The grey dappled horse whickered her familiar laugh and tossed her head in a nod.  
“Awesome. ok. Bear with me now.”

\----  
Finally she finished up cleaning the tack once the lesson was done. Sir haMinch had stood over her shoulder and demanded several cleaning tasks done over. The other pages were long done and off to bathe before lunch.

Ahmond stayed behind though, and to her surprise, Tiren had also.

“i just” the chipper boy started

“ahmond, shut it.”

“i just don't get how”

“did you hear me?”

“i don't get how you can run on a fence, but not stay on a horse!”

“fences don't move.” Gwyn snapped her jaw shut.

“but you were”

“Ahmond, I like you but I am not afraid of hurting you to make you shut it.”

“but I don't understand, you're so athletic. You had no trouble getting in the saddle, that's the hardest part for me.”

“i already fucking told you it's cause the horse fucking moves. On it's own. It sways and jounces you around. Fucking death and darkness man, can't you just let this fucking go?”

his smille faltered, “oh I. oh. I know I get too excited about things. It was like a puzzle. But.. you're not a puzzle. And I didn't really realize I was hurting your feelings.”

“Ahmond, a sugar cube is meaner than you are. You might have gotten tipped off when I threatened to hurt you though. I’m not upset with you really. I’m the one being rude and just. Ugh. sorry for my stupid temper. I hate being bad at things. I’m upset that i’m bad at something and I don’t like talking about it.”

he patted her shoulder, “It'll be ok. At least you didn't get any extra hours of lessons out of horse riding today?”

“Please don't remind me of archery.” Gwyn groaned and rubbed her forearm. It was still sore from the slap of the bowstring against it.

“Don't mean to interrupt”, Tieren, forgotten till now made Ahmond jump in place like a cat,  
“The girls have their own baths over this way. It's a recent addition. And they didn't want to put it too close to the boy's bath. At least we don't need to go back to our rooms this way though.”  
her smile was easy and polite.

Gwyn had been pale since the words 'baths'  
“uh... good. um. I appreciate you letting me know. I guess. uh. I'm going this way then.” Gwyn pointed toward Tieren. Tension twisting her drawn face into a wane smile.

Ahmond squeezed her shoulder again and ran off to call back, “See you at lunch!”  
\---

the two girls walked along. Gwyn distracted herself by trying to calculate their age differences. Technically she was just a year younger than Tieren, but three years behind in training. Then again, Gwyn could be said to be only 2 and a half herself.  
Tieren had started page training before Gwyn had lost her memory. In that context she felt so much like a ghost haunting someone else's body that she had neatly distracted herself from worrying about public bath houses.

“so.. Gwyn, right? That's what you go by?”

“hm? m. yeah. Sorry, kinda spaced out.”

“it's been a long day. I get that. I'm dragging my bones around myself honestly. The afternoon classes wouldn't be so bad If we did them first. But doing them after all this work makes it hard to focus.”

“nah i'd probably itch myself to death or play hooky constantly if I didn't move around in the mornings.”

“play hooky?”

“um, be absent. I heard some kids in the city use it when they should have been in school. I don't really know what a hooky is though.”

“oh, alright.”

“uh. You were going to say something?”

“well.. yes. I kinda thought you might want to talk about Ermengarde.”

what? Gwyn racked her brain for why this might be. Should she have something to say?  
Think think.  
Nothin  
“i don't really know what you mean? And i'm not trying to be obtuse. You're not going to offend me.”

“well..” the older girl, either barely older or a decade over depending, looked up and linked her hands behind her head as she slowed their walk.  
“you didn't seem too enthused about the girls having their own bath house. Like the boys do.”

“that doesn't have anything to do with Ermengarde. That has to do with me hating any collection of water deeper than a puddle.”

Tieren looked over quizzically.  
“you're not angry with her? For her not being your sponsor?” she was putting some odd inflections on the pronouns. Gwyn wasn't sure what she was trying to shape with those inflections. But she slowly admitted

“i.. didn't want to assume that she'd be my sponsor just cause we're both girls.”

“what is wrong with you?”  
Tieren stopped and turned to face her. Fists on hips.

Gwyn sharpened her smile on her own tenseness and confusion,  
“take your pick. There's a long list. Wasn't your grandfather the healer that came to check on me in Sunshine Hospital?”

“i don't think there's a medical cause for acting like you've never met someone before.”

“you don't think? You don't think!” gwyn sputtered in outrage and continued  
“who have I met before? Ermengarde? You? We met before the ship sank? They said my family were all reclusive and barely went to court. They said nobody could even-”  
gwyn snapped her mouth shut. This chit who talked in circles didn't need to know all her pains.  
Gwyn continued in a more level tone,  
“i lost my memory. I didn't even know who my parents were when I woke up.”

Tieren jerked her head back in confusion and looked down. Her eyes darted in calculation.  
“oh. I.. I see. so. You don't remember her.”

“No. why would I?”

“so then... you weren't snubbing her. You were meeting her for the first time, in your point of view.”

“fucking yes already.”

“and you didn't want to go to the baths cause.. you're afraid of water?”

“more like I hate it, but sure, yeah.”

“i see.”

“i take it Baird didn't mention the memory loss.”

“no. just that you had pulled through. He believes talking about someone’s injuries is gossip.”

They started walking back toward the baths, Gwyn still following Tieren's lead, cause hell if she knew where anything was.

Gwyn turned all this around and around in her head. Someone who could tell her about before. Did she even want that?  
They approached a handsome brick building with trellises urging green plants to grow up around it. They opened up to an ante chamber, and were directed to changing rooms. Servants had brought fresh clothes down from the palace for them to change into, and were stacked neatly on three of the dozen benches.

Gwyn started to get grumpy again.  
“you hauled me aside because she was upset about how I was treating her?  
“do you and her know that talking to someone is a fucking two way street? If she was weirded out by how I was treating her, she could have said something. Anything. Even a 'hey do you remember me, it's been a fucking while' would have been nice! Instead of this sideways interrogation by someone else completely.”

“she didn't ask me to-”

Gwyn interrupted  
“then maybe next time just don't. Stars and void. Let people solve their own problems.”

The older girl finally seemed to show a temper,  
“You just push away everyone with that temper of yours. You’re not going to make any friends or even allies that way. I don’t care how touchy or uncomfortable you are, nor what you’ve been through. Learn to control yourself.”

Gwyn didn’t really have anything to say to that. She didn’t remember having such trouble with her temper before she got to the palace.  
She muttered, “yeah, you’re right” but Tieren had already gone into the bathing room. Gwyn wasn’t really sure what she could say to Ermengarde. After all she didn’t know the girl. Maybe just explain things from her point of view. That seemed the only thing to do. But Gwyn couldn’t push her anger down far. There was too much of it from being frustrated with herself during training and this news that someone could have known who she was. 

Gwyn stripped out of her practice clothes and steeled herself for the baths.

The room was very pretty. A large pool of blue and white mosaic tiles with potted plants. Oil lamps hung in decorative hangers and got the water to reflect back ripples of shadow along the walls and ceiling.

The two pages in the bath’s seemed very complimentary. Ermengarde had dark skin and light hair, while Tieren had light skin and dark hair. 

There was way too much water. Ermengarde was washing her hair at the deeper end of the bath pool and was thirty paces away from Tieren scrubbing soap on her hands and arms in the shallower end. Gwyn’s skin crawled and she wanted to leave. But she did need to get cleaned, and might as well explain things to Ermengarde

She dipped a towel in the water of the pool and started scrubbing her skin from her head down, 

“Hey” Gwyn called, a lot louder than she had meant. Her voice echoed around. 

“So, I guess there has been some missing information that neither of us had and whatever. So. here goes:  
“i lost my damn memory of anything and everything before I woke up two springs ago in Port Caynne. All I knew was that I had a shiney new hatred of water, a vicious urge to get up and out of that hospital bed, and I wanted to be a lady knight like Alanna and Kel. That's all I knew. I didn't' even know my own name. Or what I looked like, or who my parents were.  
“The healers said there wasn't anyone around that I could talk to about my past cause my parents hadn't ever been the type to go to court more than they needed too. And nobody at court knew much to anything about me. They didn't even know I was supposed to be gifted!  
“So you know what? I'm not even sorry your feelings were hurt when I didn't recognize you. How I act to people who supposedly knew me in a time I don't remember is not my business. Because i am not the person they may or may not remember me being. Especially if I act different now that i've built myself up all on my own. Cause no one that knew me from before I lost my memory stepped forward to remind me of how i was. No one could even verify who i really was for weeks.”

Ermengarde opened her mouth to continue but Gwyn barreled on,  
“no, I was wrong. I am sorry that I don't recognize you. It would be a relief to recongize someone from before the shipwreck. But i'm more sorry that you recognized me and didn't say anything.”

done with her outburst and done scrubbing off at least the majority of sweat and dirt from herself, she stalked back into the changing room to get dressed and run away from all this confused anger. She didn't like her anger being confused. Anger was supposed to be sharp and focused. Not amorphous like a fog that just makes everything seem so hazy and poisonous.

Trotting over to the dining hall area in the pages wing made her bruised leg and sternum from the damn saddle horn throb. But this at least was pain she knew how to manage.

\---

She sat down still roiling in thunder clouds of anger with a full tray. She was bit early still. Pages and squires weren't supposed to eat before everyone had arrived. So she sat and stared murderously at her food.

She wished she could go rip something apart. Or start a more physical fight instead of opening up emotional scars.

Other pages trickled in, then flowed in. she made sure to keep staring at her plate. She didn't want to see where people did or didn't seat themselves around her.

She made herself be fascinated by how her soup settled, and bits of oil collected on the surface.  
Someone nudged her shoulder and she shook off her meditation on soup and looked over.

Third looked bemused and concerned.  
“you alright? Looked like you fell asleep with your eyes open. We've still got classes to go to, remember.”

“yes. I remember. I um. Yeah.”

“don't worry about it, it was a long morning for everyone. They're not gonna think you are especially strange. Lots of people make fools of themselves the first day. I think the first week here I broke my fingers twice over at staff practice.”

“the first step to being good at something is to suck at it.”

“exactly! That's the spirit.”

she tried to smile back. But the concern that stuck around and his urging her to start into her lunch showed her that it hadn't really worked.

She was relieved he didn't push her to talk about what was bothering her. Just knowing he was a little concerned and his easy companionship made her mood easier to bear.

She ate mechanically. Not tasting any of the food but knowing she needed the nutrients.  
Released from lunch, they had a few minutes to grab any class materials they needed from their rooms.

Gwyn waved at Bexy, putting on a false smile  
But bexy had none of it.

“i was waiting to meet you at the baths. I figured you woudn't have a good time with it, with how you are with water. But I get back with the things I brought you to hear you yellin at that poor girl and storming off? For shame, my lady. She were crying when you left. thinks you think she's a monster cause you were so monstrous to her.”

anger snapped and crackled inside her, but she refused to snap at Bexy. She quietly supplied  
“i'll apologize later today.”

“not just apologize, my lady. You set it right. You make it up to her.”

Gwyn nodded. “as you say.” Gwyn felt exhausted. This wasn’t her fault. After some consideration, she thought it wasn’t really Ermengarde’s fault either. It was, like so many things in her short memory, the fault of the cursed Gods. 

Bexy seemed mollified, and handed Gwyn her writing kit and some scrap paper for writing notes.  
“tonight, I have extra lessons in archery. Well. Tonight and every night for three weeks. I didn't do very well.”

“seems to me you're losing your temper left and right then. Not able to focus on shooting like that. Keep your temper even, that's what nobles do.”

“yeah.”  
deflated and feeling drearily angry with herself, Gwyn headed off to the first lesson of the day, Literature and language.

The first years had to show their competence, reading a passage of a book outloud and then writing it down. Then doing the same for Yamani and Scanran. The multitude of skirmishes and not quite war going on in the north since the Scanran war had resulted in some very tricky and complicated treaties and trade negotiations. 

There were many different levels of literacy in Yamani and scanran in the class. Gwyn herself didn't know any Scanran, and in Yamani only did a better than a couple pages that had lived far away from court. The only person that did poorly with Common was Gwyn. The teacher took a look at her handwriting samples from each of the languages and demanded she have remedial lessons after supper until she could write legibly.

/Just great/, Gwyn thought. /Just perfect./

Mathematics was a relief. She was placed with a group of older pages learning a fascinating field called Trigonometry, which had to do with calculating angles. It seemed like sorcery to her. Magic with numbers. She found herself looking forward to practicing the problems and learning these new concepts.

The next class, plant and animal life, or Biology as Maura of Dunlith called it, was refreshing and relaxing. The plump middle aged professor clearly loved the subject, and enjoyed getting other people to love it too. Her classroom certainly helped since it was packed with plants and small animals living in glass or wire enclosed habitats. It was a miniature of the palace managire. Gwyn sat as far away from the fish that she could, which landed her by a brightly lit enclosure with spiky plants growing out of sand, and a sand colored lizard that was just as spiky as the plants. 

Next to that enclosure was one with sand, but also lots of rocks, and a beautiful snake that was twined in and out of a pile of rocks. The snake had bands of cream and black, with the black broken up by diamonds and speckles of red. It seemed to catch her watching it, and flicked a delicate tongue out to taste the air. Gwyn waved just a couple fingers at the glass and smiled slightly. She didn't want to scare anything that might be poisonous.

There didn't seem to be any assessments in this class, just a collection of lectures that she would go through as one took his interest or another. The result seemed fairly scattered to Gwyn, but she took notes slowly in blocky handwriting on her scraps of paper.

During a lecture about how to tell if a skunk was about to musk, and how to get the smell of skunk musk out of clothing and skin, Gwyn noticed the snake climbing out of it's enclosure.

She raised her hand to wave at professor Maura,.  
“Um, excuse me, but this stripey snake seems to be escaping.”

“Oh yes! That's a desert mountain Kingsnake, so called because they prey on other snakes in the region. Quite remarkable because they are immune to other snakes' venom, but possess no venom themselves. I think she would like to climb on you, which you can allow if you wish. Or disallow if you do not wish. This specimen is female, she seems quite inquisitive. I call her Queensnake because, alas, I am not able to pronounce her true name.”

“i.. can hold her?”

“yes of course!”

Gwyn hesitantly held out an arm and the snake wavered towards it before settling down on her palm.  
She was smooth and dry. Gwyn was delighted. The snake moved hesitantly but steadily, Gwyn added her other hand to help support Queensnake out of her enclosure and was surprised by how solid and heavy she was. She moved so ethereally, but felt like living rock.

The snake came up her arm and around the back of her shoulder, tasting the air and Gwyn's clothes as she went. Then settled across both of her shoulders, tail draped elegantly back down Gwyn's arm and half wrapped around it.

Gwyn was careful when she moved, but the snake seemed to keep her seat better than Gwyn had on Gloaming. Queensnake seemed happy to have a different vantage point, and was busy looking around and flicking her tongue out in Gwyn supposed what might be excitement.

Gwyn herself went back to copying notes.

Occasionally other critters would come visit students. A tortoise kept bumping into Ivan's leg before he picked up the creature, a Catharki spurred tortoise by the name of !Xabbu, and let him roam around the page's writing desk.

Gwyn was sad to leave the classroom when the bell rang. She carefully let the beautiful snake back into her home with a quiet, “See you tomorrow. Thanks for your company.”

The second half of classroom studies started with history, law and chivalric code. Gwyn was sad that her vague memories about the life and times of Kel and Alanna weren't carrying through here. Sir Myles of Olau was retired with his wife back in Olau, theoretically anyway. The vague rumor mill said the pair spent most of their time in the much warmer coastal barony of Pirate's Swoop, where George Cooper and the Lioness made their home.

Sir Ragnar of Briarcliff was also a knight that had turned to scholarly pursuits instead of battle or command. He had been Sir Myles's Squire twenty years ago, and since then studied at the royal and catholic universities.

His desk at the front of the class seemed to be papier-mached out of reports and scrolls of various age. His walls similarly wall papered in maps, historical poems, and landscape paintings of various regions. He kept a tin mug of tea in his hand the whole class, sipping from it for emphasis and refilling it from a simple copper pot. He talked very fast. Gwyn hoped it was just nerves of the first day of class, cause she barely followed his breakdown of the Laws of Ten, the major statutes Tortall followed in its governing. She found it impossible to take notes. Homework was only reading though, thankfully she didn't have to report on anything that she had only half heard.

On the way out of the class room, she noticed something odd about the collar of his shirt. It had seemed to move by itself while he was standing still, looking at one of the scrolls on his desk.

Maybe he had a pet snake? Queensnake had seemed quite interested in burrowing down Gwyn's shirt or tunic till she had quietly explained to the snake that it made her uncomfortable and ticklish.

Lessons with the Gift were next. Taught by Professor Numair Somaline today, Gwyn was happy to see. The man was claimed to be the most powerful sorcerer in tortall, and certainly had a huge list of accomplishments to back him up. He was neck breakingly tall, with strong and long features. His skin was brown with undertones of gold, with long springy hair that was mostly kept back with a leather throng.

When she came in, he smiles at her,  
“Gwydian, good to see you in page service at last. I look forward to seeing your progress”

She knew he meant well, so she tried to give him a nice smile and, just in case that seemed weak, a small bow. Numair had seemed to expect so much from her when they met in Port Caynne because she had three colors to her gift Then seemed puzzled as to why her Gift spun out in thin threads and not in pools like his did. As much as she'd love to be the magical successor to his great reputation, like he seemed to think she could be, she doubted she could match the focused schooling he had got in Cathark to become a black robe level mage.

Ahmond came along in the group and Gwyn looked at him in some confusion.  
“I didn't know you had the gift. You didn't compete in the tournament we did yesterday.”

“that's true. I end up feeling a little weird using it for performances though.”

“ok. Fair enough. It's good to see you here.”

.Numair's test for them was creating a globe of witchlight.

Gwyn concentrated on the citrine in her earrings, and used them to reflect and refract her thread of magic. It created a globe of softly swirling twilight purple blue and rose pink. Numair came along, and gave quiet tips and corrections to how to keep the light steady or make it brighter. Tiren's tiny dot of light glowed in an intense bead of jade. It was so bright and concentrated it left little spots in gwyn vision after looking at it.

Ahmond's ball of light wasn't and ball exactly. Gwyn looked at it closer and saw that it actually looked like a curled up beatle, down to his coffee colored gift creating brightly glowing antennae and legs hiding under its curled up carapace.

Numair came over to their shared table and looked with warm amusement at the curled up beetle Ahmond had made and Gwyn's globe light.

"Try creating light without using another symbol or focus item to shape the magic. It will help you practice shaping the magic yourself instead of channeling it through, or using another focus to shape it."

Ahmond looked thoughtful and nodded. To gwyn this just sounded like gibberish  
How was she supposed to shape magic without giving it a shape? or focus magic without using a focus?  
while she tried to puzzle this out, it seemed like trying to catch a sunbeam in her hand, Ahmond frowned into the middle distance. over his hands formed a pool of shapeless amber-brown energy. he tilted his head and the pool of energy became radiant.  
Numair grinned brightly  
"Excellent progress. keep practicing this. it will feel less awkward and require less concentration as you get comfortable with it."

The sorcerer nodded at Gwyn to try herself, but she still wasn't sure. so instead of focusing on one of the stones in her earrings, she tried drawing up a thread of her gift and wrapping it around itself in the air. just like she would wrap her gift around a piece of jewelry that she would enchant to glow in the dark.

the magic did start to emit light, but Numair was already shaking his head  
"Try without drawing the sigil. we're aiming for a level of proficiency to do this automatically, without any intervening steps."

Gwyn had to bite back her questions and tried again. if magic were the fuel that was shown what to do by foci or sigils, then... maybe she can just light the fuel on fire?

She tried to do like Ahmond had done, and create a fist of energy and then set it to glow, but it was like lighting water on fire. no, like lighting stone on fire. at least water and fire create steam. her fist of energy didn't do anything. 

Numair encouraged her to keep trying, and went off to further test the students who could create one ball of light. they were to try to create as many as they could at once, and maintain them all at the same brightness. 

the room became awash with light and crisp shadows. it was like being on the inside of an opal with all the different colors sparkling around.

Gwyn focused on her pool of energy between her palms.  
"glow dammit. emit light already. this is silly."

The space between her palms burst into flame. Ahmond yelped in surprise and Gwyn sighed. that hadn't been what she wanted at all. She clapped her hands together, heedless of the sour puckering pain from the fire as it extinguished against her palms. 

Numair had looked up at the yelp, and from a couple students over, urged her  
"try creating that flame again, since that was a result you gained. if you can figure out how you transmuted your gift's energy into fire, you may be able to sense how to create only light and not combustion."

Gwyn's jaw hurt till she consciously stopped gritting her teeth.

She created the ball of energy between her palms again, and tried to recreate the ball of fire.  
even when she berated herself and the ball of energy, and quietly cussed at it, nothing happened. It didnt’ glow, or combust, or anything but give her a headache.

As the bell for the end of this class rang, Numair loomed over her, and she braced herself for finding out she had another hour of extra classes on top of the other two she had won for her inadequacy. 

Instead he leaned down a little to talk more privately, even leaning down a little still had him towering over the desk.  
"when you have some time, I know that's hard to come by for a page, but late night or early morning are both fine, you can come by my suite of rooms or arrange to meet in the library. there we can talk and see if we can shift your paradigm, ah, your way of thinking about magic, to a way that will make this easier for you. this isn't required. But i'm happy to offer."

"Oh. Um. Thanks. master numair. I will be in the library to study two bells after supper. so if you have time then, i wouldn't mind talking magic with you. i appreciate the offer."

/i wouldn't mind picking your brain about magic at all. you're only one of the best in the world. like anyone wouldn't jump at this opportunity. /

 

The last class of the day was etiquette and the arts. they were given a few different books that they would be taught on: tortall court etiquette, yamani court etiquette, dancing, and music. The rest of the class was a crash course on how to greet and bow to the different nobles that lived in the castle. The rote memorization of titles and phrases was broken up by bowing at different angles and with different postures. Some of the pages grumbled about how boring this was, but really, Gwyn found it simple enough. just some memorization. Though she supposed on her 4th year as a page this would be like being drilled in how to walk.

 

Finally they were released to prepare for supper, toting back quite a few tomes of study materials each. The orange and cream cat curled up on her desk, and only made a sleepy noise in protest when Gwyn put her books down. Gwyn shook her head at the sleepy animal, wondering what kept it hanging around her. At supper they were allowed to wear their own clothes, but gwyn just decided to wear a clean set of training clothes with the palace standard gold tunic on top. then she would hopefully satisfy both of the instructors for archery and handwriting.

Third found her as she was deciding what to have for dinner. nothing had fish, and making a decision seemed like far too much work for how tired she was. he steered her toward a dish of spiced rice and beans and made sure she got a serving of dessert for surviving her first day of training.

"i'm your sponsor, that involves looking after you, and that demands i make sure you reward yourself after a job well done."

gwyn frowned at him skeptically  
"what day were you watching exactly?"

"well you're not planning on packing up and going home are you?

"fuck no."

"then you've done well in my book. punishments are never ending here, there's no use getting upset about having them to do."

Gwyn relaxed a smidge and smiled at him. That was sort of useful, if she could ever stop herself from being upset.

They sat down to eat, gwyn was getting nervous about having two remedial lessons back to back in the most embarrassing subjects. Especially doing one on one with an instructor focusing in on every single thing she would be doing wrong. Food was seeming incredibly unappetizing.

She was picking at her meal when the always elegant Ermengarde set her tray down opposite of Gwyn and with careful politeness asked,  
“Gareth, could I have a moment to speak to Gwyndian if you would be so kind?”

Gwyn looked up in suspicion and guilt, Bexy's lecture reverberated in her skull just as that brittlely polite tone used on someone she considered a friend made her fists ache.

Third looked surprised at her, and then silently checked with Gwyn about what he should do.  
“it doesn't make any difference to me, you can stay or go as you please. Whatever makes you comfortable.”

He squeezed her shoulder as he stood up, and moved to where Gwyn could see him in her periphery, he gave her a thumbs up in support.

Ermengarde cut right to the quick of it,  
“what in mithros's name has gotten into you?”

Gwyn curled her lip up at the invocation of the god.  
“i thought I had explained at high volume that nothing had gotten into me, but in fact a great many things have vacated me”

“including your manners? How could you think it was acceptable to talk to anyone else like that?”

“you're assuming I was thinking and plotting. I was feeling and reacting.”

“well your reactions were wrong!”

“maybe your thinking and plotting were wrong!” Gwyn shot back.

“I have been waiting for a chance to see you again, and you're treating me like i'm some horrible person, that i've personally harmed you.”

“maybe you shouldn't have waited for a chance. Maybe you should have made the chance cause I. Didn't. Know. You. Existed. And I was a little busy trying to rebuild myself into a person that could function”

“maybe you could have let people know, and actually ask for help for once in your life!” Ermengarde's voice was a harsh whisper, high toned from reigning in her yells

Gwyn could win at the harsh whisper game any day,  
“how many times do I have to say-”

A snoody deep voice behind her crooned,  
“oooh, looks like the girls are getting catty”

Gwyn was on her feet, then up on the bench she had been sitting on in a flash, whirling to face the interrupter,  
“Shut the fuck up you goddamned slime. I will bounce your head off the fucking floor!” the husky shout echoed in the large room.

The boy, well, young man, probably one of the squires from the half seen badge on his chest. He was still an inch taller than her standing on the bench, and had long arms corded with muscle and sinew. His long dark hair shook over his forehead as he snapped his head back in surprise at her outburst, and his dinner tray clattered to the ground. His fists curled into fists and he took a menacing step forward,  
“what did you just say to me? you little upstart kitten!”

Gwyn wasn't going to wait the split second for him to get in his longer range with those long arms. The inside of her skull felt like fire and her muscles sang for violence. She set a foot against the table and tensed to leap at him, one hand curled half open, ready to grab his fist, and the other cocked back to knock his stupid hooked nose flat.

She uncoiled, but didn't go anywhere. A soft, deep sapphire mist enclosed herself and the squire.  
A calm and mercilessly commanding voice spoke, it was soft, but carried through the room easily,  
“This. Will not. Do.”

Out of the corner of her eye, cause she couldn't turn her head to see better, a dark haired and beareded form dressed in simple blue and cream walked towards them, a palm outstretched.  
The simple crown and deep blue eyes told her who it was.

King Jonathan IV continued  
“we are deeply displeased by this display. Page Gwydian of Haryse, you will report immediately to Sir Pendraig's office. Squire Laurence of Port Legann, you will report to your knight master's quarters immediately. You will both await at your destinations until you have been seen to. Dismissed.”

He could have been reading from a page of a dry old history book for all his tone gave away, But he also could have been declaring war against them for the hard edge to his eyes.

The sapphire mist that had enclosed Gwyn and squire Laurence turned them neatly around so they could no longer see each other and, placing gwyn on the floor.

After a heart beat of being held this way once she was on the floor Gwyn was pissed. Why was she being held when she had been told to go away now? She called on her Gift and, in a way she wasn't sure she could have described or duplicated, and rendered the fog like it was soggy bread and ran toward the closest exit.

She kept running through the halls, furious with herself. Furious with her temper. And especially furious for the empty pit of memories and experiences she should have. People who thought the gods were benevolent had never paid enough attention to the sorrows and unfairness in the world. She would rather just have been dead in gone in the bottom of the ocean than have survived like this.

Sir Pendraig's office appeared too soon. She still had too much rage boiling around in her. So she paced back and forth, practically bouncing off the walls in her irritation at everything.  
“Page Gwyndian, come to attention” that commanding voice cut through her fugue of hatred and brought her back to herself. Her legs, shoulders, and hands ached. She snapped her legs together with a click in spite of the ache and squared her shoulders and lifted her chin in equally systematic precision.

She was staring right ahead at a mother of pearl button on King Jon's doublet midnight blue vest. Quilted with threads of silver, it held the otherwise loose cream shirt he wore tight against his chest. Britches in a blue a couple shades lighter than the vest sported cream stripes down the outside. It made him seem very defined. Very definite.

She kept her gaze fixed right ahead of her, boring into that button. Waiting further instructions. She was wound too tight to trust her own instincts or thoughts about what to do next.  
“Sir Pendraig, I trust you still have that first aid kit in your desk”

“Yes my liege”

“Then Page Gwydian, come inside the office and have your hands tended to. We'll talk once we get that bleeding taken care of.”

/What bleeding? The squire hadn't hurt her./ And even tearing through the foggy magical restraints hadn't hurt.  
She didn't trust her voice to work, so just went inside the office anyway, and stood at attention again at the side of the desk where she was indicated to stand by Sir Pendraig.

The training master looked at her carefully and asked in a voice one might use on wounded and panicked animals,  
“Look down at your hands. See the blood? That's yours. And you're hurt. I am going to tend to your hands. It will sting some, and it involves touching your hands and forearms.” after a fraction of hesitation he added “please don't deck me, Haryse.”

Some dark part of her was pleased that he thought to request not being hit. That he had admitted she was capable of that. So she unbent a tad to look down.

Her hands were still in tight fists, and they were bleeding. Blood slowly welled up and fell to the floor, and had been falling to the floor since she came in. droplets showed a trail back to the door where the King stood, watching silently.

/When had this happened?/

She wasn't sure if she spoke aloud, or if the confusion was clear to read in her face, but Sir Pendraig talked quietly as he took her wrist in one of his hands and carefully dabbed at the knuckles with a cloth,  
“We came to my office after talking with Squire Laurence about his inappropriate behavior. An orange cat almost tripped me and signaled i should follower her quickly. She lead us to find you pacing outside. You punched each wall as you came to it and turned around. The walls have splotches of red on them. If we had known you would react that way, I would have suggested we see you first. It was not my intention to have you come to harm while waiting for us to arrive.”

he sounded so calm. Like he was a totally reasonable guy. Someone she had a long standing rapport with instead of only having met yesterday.Like what she had done was also reasonable. But gwyn was pretty sure making yourself bleed wasn’t exactly reasonable.

Staying silent was easier than trying to say anything on purpose.

When he tended to her left hand, she felt a familiar grinding pressure deep under her skin  
“broken.” she informed him.

“mithros and the goddess.” the king swore under his breath “how on earth did she manage-” he broke himself off. She started feeling even better with the King letting down his cool and calm exterior crack like that.

“well, majesty, she didn't seem to notice anything else that was going on”

“stop. Talking about me. Like i'm not here.” Gwyn had to stretch her tense jaw after gritting the thought out.

The knight's pale eyes snapped to hers, “Page you will talk when you are spoken to.”  
her teeth squeaked as she ground down on a reply.

Silence was held till her left hand was done being dressed. It was much looser than her right had been done, to reduce chances of worsening the break in her hand bones.

The king came over to stand beside Sir Pendraig. He placed well calloused fingertips on the desk and leaned toward her  
“Tell me why, exactly, I should allow you to remain in training here after that display in the dining hall”

Gwyn kept staring straight ahead, at a block in the wall. Her head buzzed and shook. All the stress she had felt this day seemed to become a hive of bees in her head. She could barely keep her gaze focused on one spot on the wall in front of her. It took a while, but a thought emerged from teh buzzing.  
/i haven’t broken any rules. I was going to start a fight, but i didn’t actually hit anyone. I haven’t physically done anything wrong/  
“if your majesty or my lord could tell me what rule I have broken, I can present my case.” 

The training master rubbed the spot between his eyebrows as the king's eyes widened in almost comical disbelief.  
“Do you seriously believe that you haven't broken any rules?” he seemed dismayed by her lawyer's response.

Yes, this path she had turned them down was a good one. In a low monotone rasp she relayed her performance verses the rules that Sir Pendraig had laid out this morning,  
“I obeyed the orders of the knights and nobles at the palace. I was not late to any of my lessons. I was not up after lights out. I was not in the room of another page or squire with the door closed. I haven't drank alcohol. I might have yelled at people, but I feel doubtful that is enough to be considered bullying. I.. guess I did sort of bleed over my clothes. I can accept that as an infraction.”  
Lord Padraig looked up at the ceiling in supplication or disbelief, she wasn't sure, though she continued smoothly,  
“I haven't been to any healers, palace or otherwise. Nor have I been outside the palace walls. I haven't brought any harm to any animals. I was having a quiet conversation with another page when we were both rudely insulted. I believe as a noble and as a knight in training I have a right to voice dissidence over being insulted. I did not strike anyone. Nor have I damaged any palace property. Except bleeding on it, which will wash out.”  
The two men stared at her.  
“how.. can you go from beating a wall bloody and breaking your hand without noticing, to talking as though you were a barrister for a magistrate?” The king finally managed in his solid and calm voice.

“i'm a noble, your Majesty. And i'm a warrior.” Gwyn felt like bravado was the only thing keeping her conscious. Her hands had started to ache and with them all the other pains of the day. 

She wanted to ask again about his first demand of her, to defend herself from being kicked out. But she didn't want to risk being called impertinent.

Pendraig spoke up, “it's a bit of a stretch to call you a warrior. You don’t have much training. You’re more like a battle rager.”

“Battle ragers are a type of warrior, my lord, I didn't say soldier. I am studying here to be a weapon for the realm. I know as well as anybody I have a lot to learn, Sir.”

The king got them back on track,  
“You really think your only infraction was bleeding on your equipment?”

“As far as I understand the rules laid out by the training master this morning. Any disruption I may have caused to supper I believe to be justified by the slight he gave against not only against myself, but to Page Ermengarde of Tirragen.”

“You almost jumped him to fight with him in the middle of an assembly!” Pendraig finally exclaimed.

“I almost did.” Gwyn agreed. “ But I did not.”

“because his majesty stopped you with his gift!”

“I did not hit him. It is entirely possible that, him being a squire and having received more training than I have, could have evaded me. It is also possible that I could have changed my position slightly so that I would have missed him on purpose, only putting on a display for wounded pride's sake. The outcome of the encounter is uncertain. Are you really going to punish me for something that didn't happen?”

“You were so keyed up you broke your hand!” she wasn't sure if he was angry or just astounded.

“is there a rule against that? I don’t remember one.”

“Enough.” the king cut in.

“Page Gwydian, you are hiding behind the letter of the law and a lot of heavy 'what if's and 'perhaps’.  
“Convince me that you should remain a knight in training, as you called it”

The buzzing seemed long behind now, there was just the path of this discussion, it wasn't very different from flying over rooftops during her runs. Correct placement, chance, risk, trying to map out the best route long in advance to get to the best advantage. She looked up from the block in front of her and met his bright blue eyes,

“because I /can/ go from battle rager to barrister, your majesty. I am going to be an excellent weapon for you to wield for the realm as I continue my training here. I am going to become better at wielding the law. I am going to become better at wielding myself. Both of these things will serve you well. As I am now, I am... unfinished, I think might be a good word for it. Only half started. I've been training for this as far as I can remember, and I can't think of a single alternative I could do with my life. Anything else seems unthinkable, rather. Because I am a knight. I've been a knight since I woke up in Port Caynne two springs ago. This training as a page and squire are formalities to go through, polishing and sharpening I need to be my true self, and to prove to everyone else that I earned my knighthood.” yes. This felt right. And one final tuck and roll to the ground in this speech,  
“though I have thought of another infraction. You said that I had displeased you. That is wrong of me, I admit.”

There was a long moment of silence.  
The two men shared a look with each other.

Finally the king straightened up and tugged his doublet vest,

“Page Gwydian, take some rags and go clean the stones on the floors and walls outside this office of blood. You may ask a servant for a bucket of water and soap, but you are to do the cleaning. We will continue this discussion after your training master and I have had a chance to talk privately.”

Gwyn bowed what she hoped was the proper amount to the King, and then bowed again to Sir Pendraig. She gathered up some of the rags that had been used to blot her knuckles and headed out. She made sure to shut the door very quietly and precisely.

\----

 

The corridor cleaned of blood thanks to a servant bringing a bucket of soapy water, Gwyn used a circle of her Gift to shoo the water on her arms and bandages off of her. As the circle approached the water, the water dribbled to run off her finger tips or dried up.

She handed the rags and bucket back to the serving man, and sat on her haunches to wait.  
She realized she was missing her archery lessons. Maybe even her handwriting lessons. She'd just have to make that up somehow.

If they let her stay.

She ran back through the conversation she had just had, and knowed that she wouldn't have changed a single thing she said. But she did worry about how they would react. It seemed suddenly far more risky, more uncertain, than it had felt when she was talking.

Time continued to pass. So she sat and tried to practice turning magic into light without using magic.  
She managed not to create any fire, and did make a couple of bright strobes of light, but nothing sustainable.

Bored with that, she started to plan out a water repellant charm that would work on a larger scale than the small circle she had just used. 

The door to the office opened, and she figures she should stand.  
Without any sort of preamble, Sir Pendraig announced,  
“to learn the importance of good manners, you are going to be serving me at breakfast and lunch for the next month.”

“yes, my lord” she replied on autopilot. She could have yelled with excitement. They weren’t kicking her out?

The king added his own punishment, “i expect a detailed report on the squires that have failed their ordeals of knighthood on sunday before sunset. Including your personal take on why they might have failed the ordeal.”

“yes, my liege”

/ooooh. That sounded facinating, actually. Lots of extra work. But facinating./

“You are dismissed to visit the palace healers for the broken hand, and then you will continue your extra lessons and studies for the day.”  
she bowed and turned to trot off, relieved to be able to leave this boring hallway and have a future as a page.

She arrived at the archery range after a quick pass by the healers. She got out of there as quick as she could. The smell of medicine and pain brought back all sorts of unpleasant memories. She didn't see anyone around the range. This was almost a relief. She didn't really care for other people watching her fail.  
She went to stringing the bow. Careful not to be turning it the wrong way. It was so awkward. And on her second try managed to lose grip on something and smack herself across the face with the stave as it sprang back toward her. Her glasses launched off her face, leaving stinging lines to add to the painful whack from the bow. Gwyn tossed the annoying bow to the ground with a growl and indulged in a moment of pain management. She held her hand to the stinging lines across her face and hummed a catchy country tune, trying to convince herself that the pain wasn't so bad and she could handle it just fine.

It slowly ebbed away from being an emergency level of pain to just painfully annoying and she checked her hands for blood. No scratches it seemed. Hopefully her glasses had survived the onslaught just as well.

She squinted around the room, trying to catch sight of the wire frames glinting or the round lenses, but no luck. Thinking quickly, she fingered her earing. Numair wasn't around to tell her she was doing this wrong, so she focused her gift through the gold of the hearing to encourage the metal of her glasses to glow.  
There they were, in a corner. She carefully wrapped them back in place around her ears and went back to the damn bow.

Finally strung, she set up by a target.  
And spent an hour only hitting it by accident.

Thoroughly disgusted with herself, she headed back to the palace to meet up with Master Flintseed, the literature and language teacher.  
“This meeting is much later than expected, Page Gwydian.” he scolded

“Yes, Master Flintseed. It is.” explanations of the terrible day she was going through wouldn't' help the situation.

“Tomorrow I will have a report on promptness as a virtue among knights.”

“yes. Master Flintseed.”

she resigned herself to not sleeping tonight and sat down to practice penmanship.

He had her writing out each letter of the alphabet on a slate board over and over again to build up muscle memory of their proper shape. This was mixed in with scoldings on her posture, how she held the chalk she wrote with, and the placement of the slate on her desk.  
She bore this in as much silence as she could, limiting her vocabulary to “yes master Flintseed” and “no master Flintseed”  
The hellish hour ended finally and she fled to her rooms to gather up all her study materials and tell Bexy not to expect her till late. She fled before Bexy could ask about the bandages on her knuckles.

\---

On the way to the library, she passed a room with an open door, and a voice sang out for her,  
“Hey Gwyn! Come study with us!”  
Third was waving madly at her from the foot of a bed, and several other pages were sitting either on the bed or crowded around a desk.

“um. Why don't you study in the library?” the crowd of people made the back of her neck itch.

“oh, um, why don't we study int the library?” Third asked the group

“cause there are assholes in the library?” a slight sprite of a boy mused over his homework

“oh well,” Gwyn quipped, “if the assholes go to the library, then I kinda need to make sure I assemble with my people.”

“you're not an asshole Gwyn, you're a hero!” Third beamed at her “Laurence has always been a goblin about girls and 'lesser nobles' becoming knights”

“can you teach me that war cry?” someone else asked

“war cry?” gwyn looked around to try to spot the asker

“yeah! When you went to hit him, it was super cool, I got goosebumps. It was fantastic!” it was an older page, with black freckles that would mass into a stretch of black skin in sections over his face and hands. Or maybe it was that he had dark skin, with wide sections of pale skin.

“i.. I don't remember a war cry. You mean threatening to bounce his head against the floor?”

“no no, it was like a growling shriek. Very intimidating.”  
other boys were nodding.

Gwyn shrugged. “i um. Don't remember that. I guess. Sorry. I didn't do it on purpose.” eager to change the subject, she continued

“um, so... I'm gonna hit up the library. And thank you very much for the invitation. But it's a bit too crowded in here. plus I need some research materials besides our text books.”

Third urged her to wait for him while he got his books, and a couple other boys also packed up their things agreeing that real chairs and table space would help.

\--

The call for lights out came far too soon. Gwyn had completed her math work and even helped some of the other boys with their algebra. She also had collected some texts for her extra essay assignments, and done about half the reading she needed to do. All the essays and reports were untouched. She had to fend off a lot of questions about the altercation, her bandaged hands, and how talks with the training master had been, but eventually she got it through the curious boy's heads she needed to study first, and gossip could wait till she had free time. 

Her body seemed to be running on empty, burning a pit in her stomach and emptying out her bones. But she wasn't going to give into sleep yet. School work really was something she was good at, despite her handwriting. she was determined to make a good impression and keep up on it.

All the pages trouped back to their rooms, yawning and saying goodnight.

Bexy was knitting in a chair by the hearth and looked up to smile at her.  
“I feel as though I have barely seen you my lady, tell me about your first day?”

“I will. Could you make some coffee? And dim the lights. I'm not supposed to be up after lights out, but I have a lot of unfinished work.”

“My lady. Surely you need sleep.” Bexy chided.

“I'll sleep. I just need to finish some things.” gwyn lied smoothly. “the coffee will help me get my work done all proper and i'll head to bed soonest.”

Bexy seemed to allow this, and set up a kettle while Gwyn gave her an abbreviated version of the day's events. She was nervous about things at super, especially considering the lecture she had gotten after lunch, but Bexy just seemed exasperated, not angry with her.  
“my lady should have more self control than that.”

“well... I guess I'm going to learn self control here or get kicked out.” gwyn shrugged.  
“I don't intend on getting kicked out. I promise Bexy.”

“see that you don't.”  
Bexy banked the fire after the coffee was made and continued knitting to keep Gwyn company. She could knit by touch, which was a skill Gwyn thought was magical. Even knitting was beyond Gwyn's patience, but not needing to see what she was doing made it seem impossible. 

Gwyn herself bespelled her glasses to let her see easier in the dark, and set to writing out assignments. Each one she wrote a draft copy first, in her fast and scrawling handwriting to focus on the words and ideas. Then she wrote out a proper copy, focusing on each letter to make sure it was formed neatly.

When she found herself yawning, she did a few exercises, and jumps to get her blood warmed up and to relieve stiff muscles.

Bexy declared she had finished the section she was working on, she headed to her own bed in the side room with one final urge for Gwyn to get some sleep.


	5. In Which Gwyn is Exhausted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cast:  
> gwyn, bexy, Third, Sir haMinch, Master Flintseed, Queensnake, Gloaming, Oscar of Coastlight

Gwyn was rubbing at sandy eyes, trying to see if she had made any mistakes she could easily correct in the report on proper titles and epithets in court as Bexy came out in her night dress to tend the fire and start tea.  
Luckily she only clucked her tongue at seeing Gwyn in the same position she had left her in, and started making some tea.

Gwyn felt like a hollow shell. A guttering candle in the wind.  
The tea was warm. And sweet. And that was divine.

“I think. That i'm done. And that I need food. And this tea is better than anything else I've ever had.”  
“Go wash up my lady, and I can see what I can scrounge from the servant's quarters while I get us firewood.”

“This is only a small part of why I love you. Don't think that this part is a small part on it's own. It's like huge. But still small compared to how much I love you over all.”

“You're talking silly my lady. Go wash up and get fresh clothes on.”

Gwyn washed the sleep out of her mouth and scrubbed her face with lavender soap and a washcloth. The mirror showed her blemishes had doubled overnight. Tiny angry dots that warned of hormones and puberty. She undressed to find a variety of bruises blooming over her skin, and then carefully cleaned and bandaged her hands. The healer seemed to have put an extra couple days of healing acceleration into them. The bruises were very colorful, but not too painful, and the lacerations were tightly scabbed over.

She was stamping into her boots when the outside door opened and brought in an amazing smell of warm pears.

“Stars and void you are the best person ever, Bexy”

“I know, I know my lady. I brought plenty. Even some bacon loaves and spinach pastries.”

“Thank you thank you thank you”  
She barely tasted the flavors, the warmth and solidness of the food was enough to start to satisfy her burnt out reserves of energy.

“Ok I just need ten hours of sleep, and maybe fifty more of these assorted pastries and then i'll be back to normal.”

“Ha, well, my lady I don't mind that you stayed up one night, but if you try to stay up two nights in a row, i'm going to drug your food to make you sleep. You can't get stronger without sleep, my mam always said.”

“Your mam is very wise.  
“I have to serve my lord haMinch at breakfast for the next month. I don't really know what that all entails, so I'm going to head down there a little early and try to figure things out. Thank you for the tea, and a thousand thank yous for the food. I didn't get supper last night.”

“Yes I thought so. In a fight with someone already?”  
Bexy gestured at Gwyn's bandaged hands.

“Uh no, not a proper fight. I was interrupted from bouncing this smug slime's head off the floor. And then I sorta.. well I was pacing back and forth and walked into the wall a couple times.”

Bexy looked over at the cat,  
“Your highness should have been watching her and told me she were hurtin herself like that again.”

The cat washed an ear innocently

“Your highness?” gwyn asked Bexy

“Yes, i've decided to name her Princess Pumpkin Puffball.”

“uh. Huh. Well. You two have fun. I'm off to learn how to serve a noble breakfast.”

Bexy called after her as she was leaving,  
“It involves suffering through the noble swearing a lot until they get some tea!”

“Har har har. You're hilarious Bexy.”

\----

The palace staff setting up the breakfast were helpful enough when she explained what she was tasked to do and politely asked for help. They even offered her a thick slice of ham with cherry preserves, and plenty of butter, sandwiched between a hearty roll. She wasn't sure about mixing ham and cherry preserves, but it was actually amazingly delicious.

Sir haMinch strode in and sat at his chair. She was ready for him and carefully carried over a tray she had prepared. Porridge thick with pears, some of that ham neatly arranged alongside a hash of squash and sweet peppers. Once that was set in front of him, she smoothly poured him a glass of the grape juice the servants had said he favored. The breakfast serving was topped off by a hot mug of black tea.

All that done, she stepped behind and to the side of him in case he wanted something else from her. She stood straight despite her tiredness and tucked her hands behind her back to keep people from noticing them more than they already have.

Sir haMinch didn't say anything to her, so she took that as a sign of adequacy. Her plan of saying nothing instead of accidentally saying the wrong thing seemed to have worked out alright.

\-----  
Ahmond found her as they headed out to the practice yards,  
"I missed you this morning on the wall. How did you hurt your hands? Why are you serving the training master breakfast?”

“Uh, well, the breakfast thing is a punishment of sorts. And I gotta serve him at lunch too. Cause of that almost fight at supper. I didn't sleep last night doing a bunch of coursework. Honestly I missed going up there too. I'd have preferred it to writing all night.”

“And your hands? You didn't answer about your hands.”  
He was so ernest and inquisitive she realized that she really liked that about him. 

/Too bad i'll forget about him if something else hits me with amnesia./  
“I punched a wall. Broke open a knuckle or two. It's nothing really.”

About 10 minutes into conditioning, Gwyn felt completely spent. Wrung dry and the laundry worker kept wringing her out for more of what she didn't had.  
The rest of the day became focused entirely on what she was doing right now, and how to complete that one thing.

People were just moving blurs, hard to distinguish and she caught herself muttering instructions to herself to keep her moving. She wasn't sure if she fell off of Gloaming during training because she was getting unseated, or if it was because she kept falling asleep in the saddle. She /was /  
fairly convinced that the horse curried herself while Gwyn just held the comb and brushes up to her.

Even confronting the bath house, with the history of hurt feelings and unsure social footing, not to mention gallons of water, seemed blurry and un important.

Bexy met her at the entrance, and showed her a shallow section of the baths  
“It's actually meant for the animals of the ladies, but there's no reason you can't use it, my lady.”  
A nod and grateful shoulder clasp were all that Gwyn could really manage.

The dining hall seemed to be filled with sour and burnt smells. Completely unappetizing. She didn't beat Sir Pendraig there, but focused on filling up a tray for him. Soup. Vegetables. Rolls with pumpkin seeds baked on top. She made sure things were neatly arranged and headed over to his place at the high table, set down the tray, poured water and tea, and gratefully stepped back.  
She was pretty sure she fell asleep while standing up. Luckily she didn't seem to fall.

She made herself grab a couple rolls, split one open and added in some miso seasoned chicken and also grabbed a mug of tea before she left the dining hall.

The tea was ambrosia. And woke up her appetite enough to help her stomach from rejecting the meat stuffed rolls.

She didn't even really notice the classes, just tried to make herself focus was enough effort. Digesting what the instructors were saying was hard.

In biology, she explained to Queensnake,  
“It's not that i'm worried I might drop you. I think you know how to hold on well enough. But I'm worried I'll just walk out with you, or similarly not notice you and squish you or something like that. I'll be back tomorrow for sure. And I'll try to be less exhausted.”

Professor Yates was teaching magic along with Numair today. He explained what he had been up to yesterday, but Gwyn didn't really register any of it. They were assigned activities out of a book that Duke Baird had lent Gwyn while she was still in the hospital. She had studied this book backwards and forwards till she was released. Her previous claims two years ago that she could do these practice activities in her sleep were shown to be true. 

Professor Yates was pleased with her proficiency. She wanted to quip that of course she could use the gift for magical workings. It's just that when Numair insists on using the gift for magic without workings that she gets tripped up.

 

After the last class of the day, she rested a forearm on Third's shoulder,  
“Did I get any additional punishment work today? I um. I don't think I would have noticed if a pack of dinosaurs came charging through our classrooms.”

He chuckled “yeah I sorta noticed how zoned out you were. But no, no punishment works, even though I think nearly everyone else had something wrong with their assignments. Whatever you did to exhaust yourself seemed to work out ok. I'll get you my notes and copies of the assignments. But if you need those from me another time, you'll have to pay up.”

“That's fair. That's fair. I might fall asleep before supper, can you?” she trailed off

“I'll make sure you're up and arrive on time. Gosh. You'd think you never pulled an all nighter before.”

“I've done vigils. But they didn't involve” Gwyn’s face soured and puckered in disgust, “writing essays.”  
He laughed and clapped her on the back. She almost fell on her face. Void above he was stronger than he looked with the roundness in his belly and limbs.

She made sure to get plenty of vegetables, cheese, meat and milk for supper to refuel herself as best she could from the long day and the healing the day before. She fell asleep before everyone had assembled and third woke her up again when it was time to leave.

Somehow she had managed to eat everything. She only had faint memories of hoping the limp greens were spinach and not seaweed.

She reached the archery range right on time to find Sir Pendraig there with a bow already strung for her.  
“I want you to aim at the same place on the target every time. You're wasting your efforts trying to correct your aim, and shots are going all over the place. Just focus on trying to have the same stance, grip, and angle of your shoulders and elbows every time, and don't worry so much about where the arrow hits.

This wasn't as mindless as it seemed, but the tea at dinner was helping to fill the pit of exhaustion. So she did her best to raise her elbow to the same level and put her hands at the same place every time. And every time sighted for the bulls eye.

At the end of the hour, there was actually a hint of progress. She wouldn't' say she was anything close to accurate, but instead of her shots going everywhere, they were consistently landing to the left of the bullseye. Either hitting the ground or actually hitting the target.

As she unstrung her bow and cleaned her equipment, Sir Pendraig told her earnestly,  
“I’m your training master. So I will do my best to get you the tools you need to learn this properly. But by Mitrhos, if there is an emergency and I have to lead the pages into a combat situation, you are not to touch a ranged weapon.”

“Oh good.” she sighed with relief. “I mean. Yes my lord.”  
“You better stop falling off your horse too, or you'll be spending another hour working on that in the evenings.”

“Yes my lord.” she winced.  
\--  
Writing out letter after letter wasn't quite restful with Master Flintseed hovering, but it was almost meditative. He had her relax her grip on the quill, and while her lines were shakier without locking her hand tight, writing became a lot less exhausting and neater. The annoying ink blots became much less frequent.  
/am i actually improving on my worst subjects when i’m half asleep? That seems hardly fair/

\--  
The group from yesterday assembled in the library, joined by a few others. Oswold, the 2nd year page with the pale and dark patterned skin joined them again.

She mustered up the energy and nerve to ask him,   
“I know I don't go asking people with freckles like Dorian or Ivan how they got their freckles. So I feel sort of rude to ask you about your skin. I've never had the opportunity to really talk with someone with a similar pattern before. Though I have seen a grocer and I think someone in the army with um, I don't know how to phrase it. Sorry. My mind is running on empty. Feel free to ignore me.”

“Nah, it's fine. The healers call it vitiligo. I tend to have to explain it whenever new people come in, or I move somewhere new. It's just sorta part of it. People know about albinos, but it doesn't seem like anyone's taught about vitiligo. Even though it's more common by far.”

“huh. I guess you're right. Lucky for you being a knight comes with a good bit of political power, yeah? Can make changes. Stuff like that.”

“Is that why you want to be a knight? To make changes?” His liquid black eyes shone with interest.

“i. I want to be a knight cause. Cause. I... hm. I am personally offended by disasters. Having only one person survive from a disaster is atrocious. More knights is more help for disasters. More survivors.”  
Oswald nodded with understanding.

Gwyn continued in the same rasping drone, “can we get some coffee? Or tea? I am... not. I can't even read i'm so tired. I'll have worked so hard to avoid punishment work just to get heaps of it tomorrow.”

With a steady stream of tea, she managed to create her first drafts of all her work and start working through the second drafts by the time lights out was called.

As they packed up their things, Oswald asked,  
“hey so, trade you an uncomfortable question for an uncomfortable question, what's up with you and Ermengarde?”

“Fuck I wish I really knew. um.” Gwyn looked over at Third to include him in the explanation “a couple years back I survived a ship sinking by like, the skin of my teeth. Lots of time in a hospital. Really sucked. I lost almost all of my memory. I didn't remember anything like my name or family or home. I knew silly things like how to read and how to do math. But not like... anything super useful.  
“so I guess Ermengarde knew me before the sinking? But I didn't know that. And she didn't know my condition was as bad as it had been. so.. I don't know. I guess we used to be friends, but I don't remember any of it.”

“so that's what you meant by drowning.”

“um. Yeah. I.. have been really touchy about it. I even can understand that i'm overreacting while I'm over reacting, but I can't quite get myself to not over react in the first place... does that make sense? I'm trying to learn discipline over my reactions. It's hard.”

“Well hey, you didn't snap at either of us. So congrats!” Third grinned. She was fairly sure he was making fun of her

“I'm too tired to react to anything right now. I don't think it counts. But I reserve the right to get shitty at you two if any of this gets fed into the rumor mill and becomes annoying to deal with.”

back in her room, she slowly trudged through copying out the second draft of all of her homeworks and fell into the camp bed fully dressed.


	6. In which a goddess is RUDE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cast  
> gwyn, Graveyard Hag, Third, Duke Gareth, Sir Kel, Princess Pumkin Puffball aka Orange Cat

The days stretched on in an exhausted mist.

The report on the deaths and failures in the Chamber of the Ordeal was fascinating. She had to find time to go to the royal library for their more complete records, and Duke Gary was most helpful in digging up manuscripts she wouldn't have thought to look for. His Grace explained that his father, Duke Gareth, had lost a finger in the Ordeal, and so Gary had made his own study of the losses made to the ordeal of knighthood.

The first Sunday of page training, she was ready with a very long report. While death and failure were uncommon. The chamber of the ordeal had been around for a very long time. Looking into the whys of how they died or failed made the report even longer.

The pages trouped out to the temple district at dawn to attend dawn worship of the sun god on the sun's day. Gwyn tried to appreciate that she wasn't doing conditioning instead of stirring up past resentments she had toward the gods of the realms.

After that service had concluded, pages were released to any other worship they may wish. Most of the gifted students and the two other girl pages went to the temple of the Goddess, but Gwyn went to the stark temple of the Dark God. She went through her normal routine of lighting candles and meditating that killing for any reason is bad. She wondered if that battle rager spark in her would kill opponents mindlessly. /I guess i'll deal with that when I come to it. Hopefully won't be for a while now./

Downstairs was empty. She was surprised, but then again, she had avoided the temple districts on sundays. She hadn't wanted to see the pages that she desperately wanted to be part of. There was a body covered in black cloth on one of the tables. 

That seemed odd for the monks to leave someone's remains left unprepared for burial, so she started the process herself. Cleaned and geared up, she gently pulled back the black cloth. Underneath was a young girl, with short cropped hair and earrings glinting almost absurdly against her death pallor. Gwyn felt a shiver as she noted the girl's cleft chin and small scar on the underside of her chin. Just where Gwyn had a matching scar after nearly impaling herself on a spiked fence.

As she continued looking over the body, she started to feel numb. Every scar, every marking on this girl's remains matched Gwyn's own.

She stepped back to try to initiate some mental distance from this. She was probably overworked and just identifying too much with this person's remains. A creaking laugh sounded behind her. Gwyn spooked and jumped around.

An old woman, hunched over a warbled cane so her thin breasts sagged in her loose rag of a shirt. Various patches made up her skirt, and her thin hair was a rats nest where it still remained on her head.

Gwyn wasn't sure, between the age spots and layers of dirt, and what looked to be large patches of scarring or burns what tint her skin had been originally. Maybe she even had vitiligo that was accentuated and confused by how poorly her skin had been treated. Her eyes were smoky and glazed from cataracts, but focused in on Gwyn piercingly.

“Scared you did I?”  
her voice was a parody of crumbling hay. Gwyn worked some moisture back into her mouth and asked

“who are you?”

“Now now, my pet, why would I answer your question, eh? When yous hasn't even answered me own?”

Her accent seemed to warp and shift under the husky dried out quality of her voice. As she spoke gwyn caught sight of a collection of teeth that didn't' seem to all be human.

Gwyn gripped the cold of the preparation table behind her. Trying to root herself in the reality of the cool marble.

“Alright. Yes. I'm quite frightened. You did scare me. I ask again, Who are you?”

“surely you've got yerself some notions, bein so familiar with this place.”

“Thrice I ask and done, Who are you?” Gwyn wasn't really sure if this children’s tale law would work on this entity. Heck, against all odds she might even be human.

A laugh like rotten woods crumbling became wet racking coughs.  
“my dearie should recognize me, from the black depths. But i'll remind ye, poppet of a child you are, I am the Graveyard Hag.”

/The dark god's daughter. The scavenger, the bone picker/. Gwyn had heard of her.

“yes that's right, pet.” Gwyn hadn't realized the epithets had been said out loud, but then again, maybe they hadn't. Gods could probably read minds.

Gwyn switched tactics,  
“grandmother, will you tell me what happened to the monks here please? And what I am doing under a shroud on the table?”

A snaggle toothed smile answered her. “just setting things up to get your attention my sweet poppet.”

The claims of mine and my were really getting under Gwyn's skin. Of all gods to be claimed by, this one had to be among the worst.

“Well done, grandmother. You certainly have my attention. Will that be all?”

“thou havn't finished thy work. That's a lazy chit.”

Gwyn looked at her steadily, wondering what the best way to proceed would be.  
/Fuckit, let's try honesty./

“it gives me the wiggins to work on this body alone.”

“i will assist ye then.”

“you'll need to wash up first.”

The goddess scowled up at her over a flattened and often broke nose.  
“As if I don't know my way around the dead. Thou are an uppity wench with no respect fer yer betters.”

“I've got respect for the dead though. The remains aren't going to get cleaned if washed with dirty tools.”

The goddess gave a wicked grin. It didn't just show various teeth and the dangers of gum disease, it showed bugs crawling inside bloated bodies, stormwings cavorting in the remains of a battle field. It showed the sickening grisly things that happened to all types of corpses. Gwyn swallowed down bile but kept her gaze on the goddess.

The entity shuffled over to the pump and spent some time at it, when she came back her hands were clean of the protective layer of dirt, and showed mottled skin with scars and burns, warts and unnatural bumps. Her fingernails were thick and yellow, all different lengths.

They worked in silence for a time, carefully cleaning down the length of this copy of Gwyn. As she worked, Gwyn tried to sense if there was any magic to this, tried to figure out how these remains seemed to be an exact copy of hers. But Whatever gods were, their magic didn't seem to be compatible with the Gift. She didn't sense anything.

“I hold your memories, did you know that? I gambled on them and won them from the dream king.”

Gwyn nearly snapped the brush she was using in half. But tried not to outwardly react more than that.

“Old Gainel, he was gonna give them back to you. But I took pity upon ya. Wanted to give thou a choice if you even wanted them back. You're not the same bright lassy with steady hands and a kind heart that lost them, now are you?”

Gwyn looked down at her copy that lay on the cold table. Trying to think of the multiplication tables she had memorized, hopefully blocking this hag from reading her mind. And if she was more honest, trying to keep from decking a goddess. 

“nay, you're a mean and bitter one now. Twisted with pain and hatred. And fear. Mustn't forget the fear that drives you as much as it blocks your path.” the goddess laughed again, wet and hacking.  
“you could reconnect with what you were, what you would have been aughtwise. Become whole again. Surely you've been noticing that you lose bits and pieces of your memory even still. “Especially when that lovely rage burns them up. One of these days, you're going to need to know what happened in the furnace of your hate. Your memories will just keep dribbling down the hole in your head to be gathered up by me. Discarded like so much else you've lost.”

Gwyn managed to unclench her teeth and separate her lips enough to tensely ask,  
“what happens if I say yes to your deal, grandmother?”

“I'm only offering as a favor” she cajoled sweetly. “and turn about deserves another favor.”

“Then what happens if I say no.” gwyn's lips twitched to be pulled back into a snarl, but she fought it.

“I've got me hooks into you, sweet poppet.” the sweet tone was saccarine and cloying. But still didn't hide the threat.

“you said you made a deal with Gainel, you didn't' mention any deals with me.”

she cracked a laugh, high and shrieking. More like crow calls than human laugh.

“how do you think you survived that wreck in the first place deary? My ~honorable~ father took pity on you out of everyone?” 

“You're not answering my question. What happens if I say no?”

“I already told you, chit. You're going to need to know what happens when youre in that lovely, tearing, destructive battle rage of yours. This is your chance to get that knowledge. And all the other precious gems lying at the bottom of the sea.”

“No deal.” the decision was easy. If anything, those new memories would make life.. more painful than not having them was.

“this is a one time deal, my sweet doll.”

“no deal.”

“we could bargain, you could ask for the ability to bring your loved ones back from the dead.”  
she nodded her withered face toward the body on the slab. Gwyn looked down and saw Ermengarde laying there. Finally ungraceful in death. The visage changed to Ahmond locked in a rictus of agony

“fuck you. No goddamned deal.”

the goddess seemed to blush, Gwyn hoped in anger, but then the face turned to a grotesque parody of a court lady's simper

“My dear, what lovely language. You certainly know how to flirt. Well if you're not going to use the memories, maybe I can find someone who will, eh?”

she couldn't do that, surely. Couldn't she? Gwyn looked up in concern to where the goddess had stood, but the room was still and empty.

\-----  
Shivers scaled up and down her spine. Gwyn hugged herself and shook them out of her body.  
Then, more shaken than she cared to admit, gwyn went back to cleaning and tending the remains on the table.   
Gone was the body's similarity to her own. Now it was a young woman, bruises and cuts over her body telling of long months of terror and strife. The wedding band on her finger along with the large number of finger imprints up and down her arms and legs of varying ages spoke to who that terror and strife was caused by. This wasn't the first time domestic abuse had only been brought to the light by the monks of the Dark God.

Gwyn hurriedly finished and cleansed herself. Then checked the log book, and found the description of the remains along with her last known address and name. The anger and outrage sparked by the Graveyard Hag buzzed and frothed in her skull and down her arms to go to that address and reproduce every last bruise on whoever she found there. 

But experience told her the proper thing to do. And she knew that it would be more effective than terrorizing some abuser. He'd never believe that his crime was bad anyway. Or that her punishment was just. Best to leave this to the professionals.

With her endlessly practiced neat handwriting, she wrote out what she had done for the remains, and added a note that she would be reporting the young woman's wounds to the clerics of the Goddess.

\-----

She wasn't surprised to arrive at the palace late after dealing with the aftermath of that strange morning. The fact that she was late due to holy law and the interference from a goddess didn’t matter. The result of being late was what mattered. A low growl from the assembled grumpy pages grew in the hall as she assembled a lunch tray for Sir haMinch and brought it to him.

That afternoon sped by in a variety of punishment work. The clerk outside the King's office bid her to wait till he had finished reviewing her long essay on the Chamber. That delay of course made her late to archery practice, which gained her another week of additional archery work. She didn't complain too much about that though. She knew she needed it. 

Being late to lunch meant an hour of mucking out the stables. She didn't mind that too much, because she had never done it before, and the lye and oil from the Dark God's temple masked the smell easily.

Master Flintseed seemed encouraged by her progress and set her to practicing scribe work for the next week instead of copying out each letter over and over again.

After that first terrible Sunday fighting practice seemed to get easier instead of harder, till Sir haMinch put her in with the veteran pages. She barely had the energy to be thrilled to get taught by Sir Kelandry. Working to catch up with the advanced combinations and grueling drills in spear work left her with not much energy to spare.

In normal archery class she went from missing the target entirely most of the time to missing the target only half of the time. In her extra archery classes haMinch changed tactics and removed the target circle entirely. She was to only focus on her personal set up with the bow and try to duplicate every shot. He used a wide hoop of wicker to check her precision in muscle memory. Each week he demanded that her shots land within the circumference of a smaller hoop. This never happened. But she was undoubtedly making progress. She knewarchery would ever feel natural and easy. There were too many flimsy connections between the string and the bow, and the arrow on the bow. Too much wiggle room and demand for precision, not brute strength.

Thankfully, Gwyn stopped falling out of the saddle, and could even survive Gloaming's gallop. Gwyn suspected that this was because Gloaming had stopped messing with her and started to help Gwyn keep her seat in the saddle, but she would take all the help she could get. This was just in time for the pages to start tilting practice. Holding the awkward lance wasn't nearly as hard as accounting for the jostling movements of the horse.  
Third was a natural with the lance.   
“Just think of it like keeping your sword level while you run, except the horse is running for you. But you still have to use your legs to absorb the shocks and bumps.”  
Gwyn was still pretty sure she would do more accurate damage if she ran down the tilting lane on her own two legs. Even in platemail that the knights used she bet she could at least hit what she was going for if she ran on her own.

Queensnake kept crawling over to visit her during Biology class, which was a helpful reassurance before tiresome classes with the Gift.

However she tried, she couldn’t get her magic to co-operate with what Numair expected. to Nothing quite worked in a useable or repeatable way. Once she flooded the entire room with light for five solid minutes to the point that no one could see. Everything was washed out in bright searing light that left them all half blind for the rest of the class. Professor Yates had tried to cheer her up for creating such a useful spell to use against one's enemies while the rest of the class grumbled.

Eventually she got discouraged beyond her own limits, and she worked some more on that water repellant charm instead. She had started designing it the first day of classes. That seemed ages ago, but was really only two and a half weeks. She would still work on the witchlight problem if a teacher prompted her to, but Gwyn wanted her time to be productive. Not this erratic and disappointing progression she had so far. 

 

\----

Five weeks after the first day of page training, she was finally free of the extra lessons each day. She still wasn't any good at archery, like most of the rest of the pages. But she didn't disgrace herself. Now at least it was mostly a complete ignorance of how to account for range and wind, or the changing weather of fall that messed her up. Weeks with a scribe and learning to relax while writing had taken her scrawl into a neat march of words across the page. She still saw the shakes and quivers and inconsistencies in her writing, but they didn't dominate it like they had.  
She was completely flabbergasted when the next Sunday after lunch Sir haMinch allowed her to visit Corus. She was so used to being under punishment work she hadn't ever considered being allowed something like a reward like that.

She gathered Bexy and they rode down to the city and visited old friends and acquaintances. Gwyn gave Corel a hug and begged him to spar with her after supper to show how how she'd progressed in the last month. 

To her delight she found Natalie and Miss Sokera in the garden, heads bent close over some plants and hands touching. She knew they both loved gardening, it was nice to see them become more than friends.

While Natalie went for more ingredients for dinner, Gwyn visited her favorite gem and beading store to look over their selections and restock on some things. As she took less time on her homework without having to copy it out twice, she had started to craft some charms and jewelry for her friends at the palace in preparation for Midwinter.

Walking through the streets instead of rushing over the rooftops she saw more of the people in the city. Her gaze kept skipping over the bright and cheerful interiors of shops and finding the dark alleyways where people huddled for warmth over small burning piles. There were so many, and she hadn't really realized them before. /Was this something new with the Rogue of the city? /This was a higher end district though. She didn't think people who relied on the Rogue would come out this far.

She made an extra assignment for herself to ask the Lord Provost. Perhaps even Duke Gary would know.

After a astoundingly delicious dinner of Natalie’'s soda bread, smashed potatoes with butter and chives, and thick fried sausages, Gwyn had everyone gather around and dictate a letter to Stefain.

When she recuperated from how full she got at dinner, she made good on challenging Corel at the back patio. He still weighed twice what she did and still hand almost a foot on her, so it's not like she won any of the bouts, but he said he was very pleased by her progress. The spent a good deal more time just talking Shang techniques and him telling stories of techniques he learned in his city guard days.

 

Bexy and Gwyn had to hustle to get back to the palace in time for lights out. And of course Gwyn had neglected to do her classwork for Monday. She spent the whole night fueled with cold tea and happy memories to read, crank out reports, and puzzle out mathematics. The problems were exactly like puzzles or ciphers. You had a scant amount of information to start with and the solution lied in finding everything you could about the angles and lengths of the figure with just 2 or 3 data points to start with.  
Gwyn loved it. But it did take a lot of time to sus out everything correctly.

The next week dragged in a sleep deprived fog as small sleepy errors snowballed into more punishment work for a few days.

Once she had finally churned back up to speed she joined Ahmond in his morning runs along the palace wall each day. Those runs were brutal. She felt like her cramps would get cramps and she would eat almost everything in sight at breakfast as long as it wasn't fish. But after those runs and her own morning exercises, Lord haMinch's conditioning seemed like a joke.

October and November blurred by. She was surprised that there weren't so many fights among the pages. From stories of Alanna and Kel fighting bullies in the page's wing, she thought perhaps there would be more of that. Of course she saw evidence of some fights, but they seemed more insult and differing opinion based than cruel bullying. 

Sometimes Dorian, Justin, Tieren or even Third would have shiners or split lips and punishment duties for 'falling down'. Nobody seemed to start trouble when Gwyn was around though. She was a little sad about that. She would have liked some more honest to life fighting experience. But she didn't' want it enough to go looking for it. 

She spent time playing chess with Duke Gary and talking about population shifts with him. The obvious homeless problem worried her with winter coming on. She learned many of those people were refugees or other people coming to population centers looking for jobs and security. Instead they seemed to be falling through the cracks. 

She spent a few chess games talking this over with him before one day that he found her studying, and set a large pile of manuscripts, reports and files in front of her.  
“I could have a clerk go through this for me, but you do seem interested. This is a lot of raw data that we've been able to get about the city that pertains to what you've been discussing with the homeless. I'm setting you the task to go through this and consolidate it, find trends, and if you can, find some data that will lead to a solution the penny pinchers would like.”

She blinked and looked up at him with an unsure smile,  
“Really sir? Shouldn't I be collaborating with someone on a task like this? Or..”

he held up a thick hand that was covered in both calluses and ink blots.  
“Your work is gonna be reviewed of course. But I'm hoping you show promise with this. Mithros knows I could use some pages that don't just think about riding off into the sunset to fight a war.”

Gwyn’s smile welled up in time with her enthusiasm,   
“well, I mean, I think I'd be pretty amazing at fighting in a war too, your grace. But i'd be happy to help with this. It will help me feel like i'm doing something. Thank you.”

“i'll collect what you've managed to get through in a week.”

\----------------------------

Gwyn really liked going through the data. If trig was a puzzle, this was layers and layers of riddles interlocking with puzzles. She spent most of her free time now in the library, going over and over the data, finding patterns from all over. 

She tested out writing requests for information on vacated houses, who owned them and what the owners were doing with them, and actually got replies back. Those went into her huge stack along with more and more requests for missing information, like how often and by how much rent was increased in certain parts of the city, and what sort of temporary shelters there were available for the refugees in the city and surrounding areas.

She worked on it through weapons practice, running through information she had read last night.  
Sir Kelandry managed to snatch Gwyn's practice spear out of her hands and snapped, “what are you daydreaming about?”

to which gwyn mindlessly answered “Rent increases have gone up 5% in the lower districts, but taxes have only increased 1%. I think the landlords are trying to smoke out people who don't have any savings to draw on.”

“You're going to get yourself and the people you're trying to protect killed if you let your thoughts go to anything but what you're doing in a fight. I want to see you focus and only think about the drills we're doing.”

The lady knight's face was serious. So gwyn tried to pack back her thoughts up and do as she bid. 

But there was so much going on to this problem that there didn't seem enough hours in the day.  
Classwork became an annoyance that she skimmed and skimmed. Doing only exactly what was asked and not putting any additional effort or thought into it.

It had only been a few days, but Gwyn felt secure enough in what she had read to start making proper reports and not just taking notes. She worked in the library after supper, waiting for the rest of the normal study group to show up.

Instead, the orange and cream tabby cat, Princess Pumkin Puffball, is what Bexy had named her came in at a scamper. She twined around Gwyn's legs and mewed demands.  
“Not now, cat, I'm working on something for Duke Gary.”

The balanced on her hind legs to bat at Gwyn's sleeve. Demanding something.  
“look if it's that important, find someone who can talk to cats.”

The cat twined around her legs again, then scampered a yard away, meowed, and then came back to twine some more. The meows were cajoling now. Gwyn frowned down at her. The cat had first come into her life when she was unconscious and in trouble. Maybe she was fetching help for someone else?  
“is someone in trouble? Sit down and raise a paw for yes.”

the cat sat quickly, tail lashing and raised both paws in a hurried wave.  
“alright alright. But if you're going to keep fetching people, you gotta work on some prearranged signals.”

the cat washed a paw at this idea, but when Gwyn was standing, she ran to the library entrance and circled around while Gwyn caught up.

Down a corridor, to another corridor Gwyn didn't use much and she thought she heard what had gotten the cat's attention.  
“Go get a healer. Dance on your back paws if you have to but make sure they come quick.”   
The grunts and pained yelps mixed with angry shouts didn't sound like just a tussle.

The door the sounds were coming from was locked. The palace had sturdy old doors with wide iron hinges. Gwyn wasn't going to let something like that stop her. She was pretty sure that was Dorian and Oswald in there. She reached for her rage and found it lulled to sleep by being productive on this problem for Sir Gary.

Quickly she woke it up and sharpened it with a whetstone of outrage and concern for her friends. Then she got in the shang horse stance, took a deep breath, and let it out as her heel whipped up to her hip and then out just below the door's lock.

The door splintered, and there was a loud shriek of metal tearing. Gwyn grinned and confidently strode through the door.


	7. In which there is a brawl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cast:  
> gwyn, princess pumpkin puffball, Dorian, Oswald, Third, assorted other pages we have yet to be introduced to, Sir Neal of Queenscove, Sir haMinch

Third was being held with his hand behind his back, sagging against the older page holding him. His nose and mouth bloodied. Dorian was picking himself up from a shattered desk that he seemed to have landed on, and Oswald was on the floor in a fetal position.

Up around them were five other pages, mostly older but she recognized one of her year mates who had his leg pulled back to kick Oswald. Everyone was looking at her in dismay.

Gwyn smiled violence. While she had their attention, she very carefully removed her glasses and tossed them to a corner of the unused classroom.

Movement returned as they clattered to the floor and the oldest of her friend's assailants cried “get her!”

Gwyn snagged a nearby chair and tossed it in front of her. It caught her first rusher in the belly and legs, tripping him. She sprinted right behind the chair. She dodged the first rusher and fluked around the second one and charged straight at the Yamani looking page holding Third.

The boy looked calm and collected as he pushed Third away to ready himself for her charge. But she didn’t go at him straight on. At the last second she threw herself at the wall he was beside, slapped it with her palm and both feet and launched at him from an entirely new angle. They went down in a tangle, but Gwyn loved tangles.

She twisted and looped her legs in among his and caught his left arm in both of hers within moments. He tried to pry her off and then started going for weak points like the pressure points in her wrists. Gwyn just laughed at the pain and cinched tighter on him. In a panic he started clawing at her face, so she bit his thumb and gripped it with a growl.

His scream was more outrage than pain, but she used his distraction to better lock down his left arm with just one of her arms, and move from tangling his legs with hers to pinning the back of his right knee with her knee, and kneeling on his right kidney. He went breathless and pale from the pain.

“Stay down.” she growled in his ear around his thumb.

His face went smooth and calm. Definitely Yamani trained.  
She changed grips, releasing his thumb from her mouth and twisting his left arm with her right until the joints were locked up. She had practiced this with Corel many times and could keep his arm pinned with just one hand.

With her left fist she let loose and pounded the flagstone just in front of his face. Her knuckles burst blood across his nose and cheek. She pounded down again and the flagstone cracked. His eyes went wide in disbelief. the drops of her blood flowed from her busted knuckles along the crack in the stone toward his face. .

“Stay. Down.” she commanded. Now his face was frozen and smooth, but she hoped that was fear and shock, not defiance.

For good measure she used a bit of her gift to tie hands together, and then sprang up.

Dorian had a few of them distracted and was defending Oswald. He had picked up her cue of tossing a chair and had one in each arm. The extra weight and reach of the impromptu weapons keeping two enemies clear of his friend.

Gwyn fell forward in a roll and popped up behind one, a barrel chested bloke. She wrapped one hand over his shoulder as the other grabbed his wrist and she struggled to put him in the Guardman's friend: the sleeper hold. He was strong though, and obviously knew his wrestling. 

He countered her twists, so she changed grips to counter his and they danced an odd awkward slapping dance of holds and counter holds till he had both her hands behind her back, twisted and locked in a shoulder hold.

She wrenched and stomped, trying to get his instep or knock in his teeth with the back of her head, but he bored own and evaded. The flesh on her forearms seemed to scream from the tension he was putting on them to keep her in the hold.

She laughed at the pain, and had a great idea. 

The stocky boy warned,   
“stop your cackling, you crazy witch. This wasn't your damn fight. You should have stayed out of it.”

One of her favorite stories from Corel's time as a city guard was when he had gotten a burglar in this exact hold. It had been her favorite cause the burglar had stolen bags and bags of precious jewels, Corel described how they had all glinted and glittered in their black velvet bags. But the main reason why this story came to mind, why she was laughing, was that the thief had shown how very easy this hold was to break. You just had to be reckless enough to break it.

She sagged and put all her weight on her e dislocated her left arm, and saw stars against the slightly blurry landscape of the room. Before he could react, she spun around and coldcocked him under the jaw. He went down like a shaggy ancient pinetree. Slow at first, then all at once. 

She checked her surroundings again. The Yamani was staying down. Good. Oswald had a boy hiding under some desks and would spring to attack him if he came out from under them. Dorian and a tall boy had been having their own tussle while gwyn wrassled with the stocky page. As Gwyn went to help, the tall boy dropped Dorain with an upper cut to the stomach. The younger boy fell groaning and cussing.

That tall boy, the one who had ordered the enemy group to attack Gwyn, was advancing on Third with a bit of broken table in his fist. Third was still conscious but badly beat on the floor. Her sponsor didn’t seem to enjoy fights as much as Gwyn did. Tears of pain were mixing with the blood on his face. And Third was cradling a broken arm with his other. But being down and wounded didn’t mean he was defenceless. Gwyn hadn’t reached them yet when Third lifted up his boot and kicked him in the fork. A funny noise wheezed out of the ring leader, and he retched. Gwyn caught some of the sick in her right hand and smeared it over the guy's face, and grabbed a hold of his ear. She twisted it while he cussed her out.

“I've only got one good arm, but believe me when I say I can break you” she rasped.   
She hoped he would challenge her. She wanted to keep on breaking, keep on smashing. The violence fed in on itself like an ouroboros and kept getting stronger. More fighting sounded like heaven. Maybe she could finally exorcise her inner demons in enough violence.

 

“What is going on here?!”  
A hard voice rang out. It wasn't like the outraged cries of anger and pain Gwyn had wanted to surround herself with, but was the outrage of righteousness. Outrage born out of concern and caring.

She didn't look away from her messy prey that she held by the ear. That concern and righteousness didn't belong. Her realm was where this messy human was grotesquely beautiful. Carved in a rictus of pain. And all hers to deal with.

Green light bloomed, washing away the dimness that just a couple oil lamps had given the room. All that light hurt her dilated pupils, and Gwyn fought not to lose track of her quarry. He was struggling to get back to his feet, but she just twisted more. He cried out as she felt something under her fingers grate and fell to his knees. A much better position.

A battered hand rested lightly on her forearm. It looked small and round. A soft friendly hand, smeared with blood and growing dark with bruises.  
“Let him go Gwyn. It's over.”

“And what if I don't want it to be over?” she gritted out.

“It's over. Let him go.”  
she finally looked over at Third in frustration. He looked concerned, and part of her unkinked when she saw he wasn't crying anymore.

“Let him go. Please.” he urged softly  
There wasn't anyway to fight that softness. It would be like kicking a bag of flour that just reformed after the impact.

She told her hand to relax, but it brought back the message that it had actually cramped up, and couldn't let go if it wanted to. She moved to use her left arm and gasped through a tight grin of pain as her shoulder told her moving that arm was not possible.   
“My hand’s cramped. Help me out? My other arm won’t work till i put it back in place.”   
Third used his one good arm to pry apart Gwyn’s fist. His fingers got smeared with the blood oozing from the older page’s ear.

As he worked, Gwyn squeezed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth and tried to relax her cramping hand. One by one, pains chimed in: scratches on her face, bruises along the arms and scrapes down her shins. A toe that loudly complained it had been stepped on by someone wearing boots when she was just wearing slippers.

She felt... floaty. Dreamy. She had touched something very real, and now everything seemed distant and soft. And very out of focus. oh. That was probably her missing glasses.

The lanky older man with a pointed goatee that accentuated his lupine features. His eyes were a green that matched the balls of witch light floating around.  
He reached a hand out for her, fingertips glowing with the gift. A healer then. She knew how healing magic looked well enough.

She shook her head at him,  
“N-no. see to the others first. See to Third and Oswald first. Check that burly guy on the floor for a concussion.”

She stepped back away from him but he followed.  
“Girl I know my business. And right now my business is triage. That means checking everyone before starting to treat injuries.”

/Fucking healers/ she sheethed  
“I can refuse your fucking healing if I fucking want to, asshole. See to the others first!” her snarl lost a lot of it’s venom as her voice cracked. 

With a deep breath that ended with a sharp exhale, he turned to Third and placed his cooly glowing fingers along the boy's scalp.  
The healer looked over at Gwyn,   
“If you won't let me help you, then help this one sit down. He's as worried about you as you are about him. I don’t know why we always get plauged by warrior stoics.” the man continued to grouch about the state of the world where pages got themselves into this kind of nonsense. 

Gwyn ignored him and turned to check on Third. He looked shaky and clammy. He needed some support to walk over to where Oswald had sat in a chair to recover. Gwyn helped him ease down, and looked up with a snarl when someone came near. 

It was only Dorian with the orange and cream cat in his arms. He stopped at her snarl and looked frightened. She tried to relax and mutter something like an apology to him,  
“s'ry. Nerves. You ok?”

“y, yeah.” he answered with only a mild shake in his voice, and came closer to sit at their study table. Cept it wasn't the library, and they were studying pain instead of class work.

“you hurt bad?” he seemed to have been doing just fine in the fight.

“not so bad. I used a chair as a shield and managed to keep them off me.”

she grunted. Shield wasn't a bad idea. She wondered if she would remember that next time.

“you sure you're ok? That shoulder... it doesn't look good.”

“it's only dislocated. Shouldn't be anything permanent. Just need to put it back.”

The healer interrupted from across the room,  
“Who did this bit of magic on him?”

Gwyn looked over and saw him inspecting the Yamani boy's hands she had tied together with her gift.

“that'd be me, master healer.”

“that's Sir Neal of Queenscove to you, lady page. Get over here and undo this.”

/Neal.. Queenscove.. Healer. Green gift./ The facts floated around unconnected for a few breaths as she got up and walked over. He was looking down at the boy on the floor and from his profile, Duke Baird jumped into her mind. /That neal. That queenscove, that healer family. Ooooh, he had been squire to Alanna the lioness and friends with Kelandry of Mendolin. I am probably in some really deep shit./

She knelt by the two and touched a finger stinging with pins and needles from the cramps toward her magic thread. It broke with a touch and she gathered back the tricolored string of light back into her reservoir.  
“There you are, Sir Neal of Queenscove. I regret snapping at you earlier. I'll submit to any healing you feel is necessary.”

Without even looking up at her as he fussed over the boy's wrist, he reached up touched her calf. Uncomfortable, minty tingles flowed from his touch as his gift got a readout of all her aches and pains and injuries.  
“Mithros and the Goddess you sit down right now and don't do anything to jostle that shoulder”

she almost shrugged but thought better of it, and turned to sit back with her friends.  
She settled back in the chair with a sigh  
“Ive never been in a real fight before. That I can remember.”

“Please don't be in any more” Third urged her, “You scared me to death when you ripped out of that guy's hold. The sound alone, mithros. I thought he had broken you in two.”

“I doubt mithros would have cared.” Gwyn grumbled offhandedly. That earned her strange looks from everyone in earshot.  
/Whoops... well I doubt they'll remember that particular bit of crazy heresy in among all the different ones I’ve done today./

“We'd’v cared.” Oswald murmured. He had been one of the first treated by Sir Neal, so Gwyn hoped he would be ok.

“Yeah, we would have been smoked without you.” Dorian added

“Thank that little kitty. She fetched me, and I told her to fetch a healer. I think she's got a hero complex as big as the sun that one.”   
The cat still in Dorian's arms washed her face with a prim daintiness Ermengarde would have envied. Of course the beauty in Ermengarde is that she could fence you into the ground and leave a smoking crater but still look prim and dainty doing it.

“Besides, I didn't do much besides distract them till the healer got here.”

“Gwyn” Third said calmly, “shut up. Let us be grateful alright? Take that as advice from your sponsor.”  
He handed her a clean handkerchief from somewhere, and she dabbed at her face. Sweat was trickling down into the scratches and itching hot.

“Maybe i'm a little worried you're trying to lay on the gratitude because I uh.. well cause you're happy I was on your side and not on theirs. Cause I.. I wasn't exactly what you'd call in control.”

“you were brilliant.” Oswald assured her. “I really love that war cry. When you kicked in the door I about peed from relief.”

Dorian added in a low voice “I think Yamada peed himself in fright when she punched the floor in his face.”

Gwyn waved a hand “hey now, I wanted him to frightened. I did crack the floor with my fist right in front of him. It's a perfectly legitimate response if someone does that to you.”

Third made a strangled noise, “how did you crack the /floor/? Without breaking your entire hand?”

“Well I might have broken my hand some.” Gwyn admitted, “Anything past my shoulder is sorta hazy right now. But I uh, i'm good with stones. I knew where the weak point in the flagstone was.”

She looked over at the healer who was healing a broken arm of the curly haired boy that Dorian and Oswald had got under the table.

“How much longer are we gonna be stuck here? I'd like to go work on that report some more.”

Third groaned, “the one you've been talking about constantly to anyone who will listen? It will be there later gwyn. Seriously. You were explaining the intricacies of one of the reports to a servant in the hallway.”

“I thought he would be interested. He said he had family that had moved to town from up north.”

“you were almost late to class.”

she went to shrug and her vision went white.

“oh god I miss adrenaline.” she groaned.

“so you're one of those” Neal's wry voice said behind her

“one of those?” she echoed vaguely. What on earth was he talking about. 

“adrenaline chasers” he clarified

“oh, well. Yeah. Of course. Aren't' all knights?”

“you'd be surprised. Now hold still. You might want something to bite down on”  
he laid gently glowing fingers on her left shoulder.

“yeah yeah, you're acting like this is the first dislocated shoulder i've had”  
ice cold lanced into her shoulder and splintered into fire. .

“stars and darkness” she hissed and then relaxed completely. The rage had been cooling off for a bit, banked but ready to go again. With the healing the coals were swept away. She felt ragged and empty. She resented that feeling  
/how had this happened anyway? Why was the door locked?/

Sir Neal let go of her and Gwyn stood up and slammed her hands on the table,  
“Alright you little shits, What the Fuck was going on here?!”

Third and Oswald jumped, Dorian let out a soft 'aww' as the cat jumped out of his arms at the noise.  
Quietly he went back to coaxing the cat back to him.

“that's my line” Sir Neal repremanded her.

Gwyn ignored him for now. She thrust a finger at the 4 older pages, the first year page must have bolted, and carried on in a fair imitation of Corel dressing down sloppy guardsmen,

“I oughta haul all of you over to Lord haMinch's office and tell him everything I saw going on.”

she swung the finger over to her friends, “ALL of you.”

“Again, lady page, you're kinda walking over my script-”  
she interrupted him to talk back at him.

“You wouldn't even be here if I hadn't sent the cat for you. So don't even start. This fight was well fucking planned. Unused room. Far away from normal hallways people use. Locked fucking door”  
she swung her finger of accusation at the shattered door knob, and then went back to yelling at the boys,  
“what the hell started this and don't you, don't you fucking, don't you goddamned dare say that this was just a philosophical understanding. Three upperclassmen kicking a ten year old while he's on the ground is not a philosophical understanding. That's a good way to kill someone. Even if he started it you are all a bunch of despicable cowards. So tell me right now why this happened!”

The ring leader stood up and looked at her levelly. He leaned forward and spat in her direction,  
“I don't answer to you, orphan scum”

Gwyn lunged at him, but her tunic went tight. Someone was holding her back. Well if they were stupid enough to think that mere clothing would stop her...  
She tucked low and raised her arms up, shucking herself out of her tunic and going in low for the shitstain.

He was ready to block her but she was sure she could hit hard and fast enough to get past his defenses.

But her first punch was halted by a tough hand like a tree branch, her secondary attack of a knee to the stomach neatly dismantled by someone kicking her Achilles tendon on her standing leg.

She hollered in frustration, a scratching scraping sound in the back of her throat.

Lord haMinch held her firmly right above her elbow and wrist, half holding her up as she tried to find her footing again.

“Page Gwydian has some good points.” he announced. He did not bother to hide the anger and disgust for them all in his voice.  
“you will all come with me. Sir Neal, please come along.”

He dragged her out of the room till he let her shake him off. Outside was the first year she thought had got away. He sketched a bow to Lord haMinch and kept well back from everyone else. 

“Lead them to my office please, Sir Neal, I’ll bring up the rear to keep an eye on them”   
It seemed a long walk with her toe still hurting. Gwyn realized she hadn’t picked up her glasses either.


	8. In Which Gwyn Gets Dumped in a Lifeboat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cast  
> Gwyn, Sir Neal, Sir haMinch, Ulrik Northwatch, a first year page, Philip of Makai, Second year, Dorian, Zachary of Blue Harbor, third year, Third, Leopold of Fitz Cove, Second year, Oswald of Coastlight, Second year, Nakuji Yoshirou, Third year Page, Princess Pumpkin Puffball

She was set to wait outside the office along with the fluffy orange cat while all the other pages and the two knights went inside the office. Before he followed all them inside, the training master ordered, 

“Wait here. Do not leave. And don’t do anything more than scratch your head. I expect to find you in the same state you are now and /not/ more damaged. Do you understand me page?”

Gwyn ducked her head and agreed. She was back to feeling empty and tired.

She sat on the floor against the wall and regarded the cat.   
"Do you really like the name princess pumpkin puffball?"

The cat squeezed her eyes closed and tilted her chin up. It looked more like an invitation to scratch than an answer to the question.  
Gwyn hunkered down to oblige.

"I wish I had brought my reports with me, then I could get some work done."  
Offended that Gwyn preferred working with flimsy paper than scratching her. The cat hopped up on the bench and stretched, bathed an ear, and settled down to nap.

"Stretching is probably a good idea."  
Gwyn agreed with the cat’s actions. She started at her neck, then worked each finger and wrists before moving on to the bigger muscles. Her left arm still felt a bit numb. And someone had definitely stepped on her toe. Her right hand felt achy and stiff from being cramped up like it had been. The rest of her seemed in fairly good shape. 

She glanced over briefly to only catch one pair of boots leaving as the door swung closed again.  
Sir Neal asked,  
"Can I see your hand again? It's been through quite a few breaks and I want to make sure no fragments came loose that I missed before.”

She eased up out of the stretch she had been in and stood.  
He looked over her hand, turning this way and that while the cool tingly feeling of healing magic frothed in her hand.

Gwyn itched with questions about the meeting and the silence made it worse. So she noted,  
“Your father said that bone breaks heal stronger and tougher. I didn't think the bones would splinter. Cause I’ve broken them a lot.”

“That's true, but the bones in the hand are still quite small. And there's so many of them that it get complicated if the healer is in a hurry. You should be fine though.

“I've got to ask though, how ever did you get that stone to crack? Your hand should have shattered something terrible before the stone ever reacted.”

“Oh well, you know, it's some Shang technique. You train by getting a wide bowl of water and smacking the water out of the bowl with the flat of your hand till the water is all gone.”

“Oh. Really? I guess that would train how best to direct the force of a strike”

“Hell no it's not real. I used my gift. Sheesh.” Gwyn scoffed. She had heard that story from Corel, but she still hadn’t figured out how it was supposed to help.

He grinned and his fine angular features changed shape to become much more handsome.  
“So tell me how you used your gift to do that then.”

“Well I had called it up for kicking in the stout door too. Uh, i'm not sure how to, I just... well, hm.” Gwyn wasn’t sure how to put it into words. She frowned down at her hands.   
“It’s like… I use anger and gift to make myself more uh… more angry than the thing I’m hitting.” she shook her head. That wasn’t right.   
“Heavier? Sturdier?” those weren’t right either. She held up a fist and then opened it, like something had escaped her.   
“I don’t know how to explain it. I guess just /more/ than the thing I’m hitting. And since I’m more than it, it breaks.”

“uh huh.”  
His green eyes were looking at her strangely, but she was starting to get used to that. Living on her own in Corus with just the people she hired, it was easy to feel normal and accepted, but here at the palace she kept being weird or unexpected somehow.

He seemed about to ask something, but then the office door opened again,  
“Gwydian. If you please” that please from the training master was more demanding than a yell or curse could be.

She bowed to Sir Neal with a polite murmur. Then braced and stepped into the training master’s office. The eight boys already inside were sweating nervously. Third shot her a very distraught look.  
She returned a sympathetic one before facing the wall behind the desk and staring straight ahead at attention.

“Gwydian, you will provide me with an essay by tomorrow of the proper responses to hearing about an altercation in the castle.”

/Is that it?/ She kept the surprise at the light sentence out of her face as best she could and stiffly replied   
“Yessir”

But the training master wasn’t done yet.   
“The nine of you are now ordered to act as a group. You will eat together, stay near each other during training and classes, study together, and be punished together. You will learn to help each other out or you will all go on probation. Gwydian of Haryse is in charge of this group, but still part of it.”

There was a rumble of dismay from the older boys  
“Sir, she will favor her friends”

Lord haMinch looked at Gwyn with his eyebrows raised, and lifted a hand that indicated she could field this. Gwyn was still trying to digest all this. 

/I’m in charge? What? What am I supposed to do. Someone in charge of a small group like this was basically a sergeant. But I’m a sergeant that was also in trouble? Well. at least I can deal with someone who speaks in disagreement during a punishment sentencing./

She whirled around to the speaker, and barked in her best imitation of Corel,  
“Shut the fuck up, Page. We're all being given a punishment, stop complaining about it's not fair or it will just get worse for all of us. I didn't ask to be in charge of a bunch of babies that squabble in locked rooms. Even if I do like some of you better than the others he just said we're all viewed as a whole. Keep your yap shut or I'll shut it for you. We don't need to be in hotter water cause you feel like your sadness is more important than everyone else's. We're all fucking sad.”

The page, he was the barrel chested she had wrestled with, blinked at her rapid deploy of critique mixed with explanation.

“Perhaps with a little less profanity, page Gwydian.” came haMinch’s voice from behind her.

Mmeaning no disrespect, my lord.” she replied with all available blandness, turned, and returned her gaze on the wall.

“Do you have any questions, page Gwydian? I will answer yours as you are the leader of this group.”

“How long will this last, my lord?”

“Till the tests at the end of the year.”   
His voice was solid with finality. She was happy that nobody voiced any complaints beside her, but the air seemed to woosh with 9 silent sighs.

Gwyn tried to make her sigh as quiet as possible and asked another question,   
“When you say we are all to be punished together, could you clarify that? If I was feeling particularly salty about this arrangement, and thought I could survive probation, I might get myself in trouble to bring down the rest of the group.”

“With the exception of punishments I will hand out to all of you, the individual being punished is responsible to fulfill his or her own punishment work. No one else will be allowed to help with that. However I expect the group to be near by while the punishment is taking place, for example, if Gwyn falls off her horse again during tilting or mounted combat training, she will be responsible for completing an hour of horsemanship training. The rest of you are also to report to the stables while that is going on, but while you are at the stables, provided you don't have your own punishment work to do there, you won't have to help with her horsemanship training.”

“It would still be taking up their time they could be doing other things like classwork?”

“Yes. You are correct.”

That just seemed a breeding ground for resentment.

She thought for a moment,   
“what kind of authority do I have exactly?”

There was shuffling and lots of looks from the boys around her and Lord haMinch lifted a cool eyebrow at her,

“you do not have the power to interfere with instructors or the commands of nobles. They are to follow your orders, however, since you do have authority that is backed by myself.”

“Ok. Do they have a way of, um, reporting me. If i'm not doing a good job?”

“Certainly, they can come and see me.”

Aand if they do, I can't uh, get even with them for making me look bad.”

“You are certainly not allowed to do so. If you do, you'll be sent home.”

“hm. Good.” Gwyn felt a little better as she got a better picture of what this punishment was all about. It wasn’t a nice picture. But at least she could see it clearer. 

Someone elbowed her, Dorian she thought, but she waved off the elbow with a “shush. I'm thinking.”  
“What about sundays?”

“What about them?”

“You've outlined what is to happen when one or more of us have punishment duties to attend to. But what about Sundays as a personal day. It seems to me that besides coming together for punishment duty, we should be able to disperse for the rest of the day. Tend to personal things without a group looking over our shoulders. I get that it seems to go against the idea of the punishment, but if we're going to be in high stress situations of training and punishment together, having personal downtime once a week I think will help with tempers and will help the group dynamic over all.”

For a long while it seemed, maybe just a few heartbeets, he looked around at each of them.  
“This request will depend on how well you, all of you, do this week.”

Gwyn nodded.  
“i only have one more clarifying question, but i'd like to check with the... group? Squad?” punishment crew? She wasn’t sure how to describe them.

“think of yourselves in a lifeboat.” Gwyn's spine went cold and tight at his calm suggestion,  
“Page Gwydian is the highest in the chain of command inside your lifeboat. And you are all in this together to try to reach the end of the year alive and well.”

“Uh... right. um. so... ah.”  
she gathered the threads of her thoughts. It was hard against that image of drifting in a big empty void.  
“I'd like to check with them and make sure i've asked the questions we feel are pertinent right now.”

He nodded and gestured that this would be fine

“Right, huddle up, Pages” she ordered in Corel's tone of voice  
She was happily surprised they did, though a little sluggishly  
“Any further questions?” she looked at all of them. The ring leader, fuck she didn't even know his name yet, stared into her eyes challenge. She looked back at him as apathetically as possible. She didn’t have time for posturing.

The first year page she didn't know very well, she thought his name was.. ul...dof? Ul something asked hesitantly  
“What are the punishments we're all gonna get besides having to do this?”

She nodded, “I figured he was saving the best for last” and tried for a wolfish smile at the guy.

“Why are you the one in charge of this?” ring leader quietly asked

Despite how much she disliked his resentful tone, that was a good question. At least to ask. She doubted they would get an answer. Gwyn nodded at him to show she heard and looked around for other questions

“we're really doing this for 4 months?” Third sounded weak at the thought.  
Gwyn reached over and clasped his shoulder in sympathy. 

“We can all complain about this later, any other serious questions?”  
Just shuffling and tense body language.  
“Right then. As you were.”  
They straightened back up in a line

“Sir, two more questions, if that's alright.”

“It is all right.” he steepled his fingers expectantly

“Why am I chosen to be the leader of the group?”

“I think you know why.”

“That's not an answer, sir” she wanted to bounce that head off his desk. She hadn’t asked for this and she didn’t want to be lumped in with these boys and she certainly didn’t want to be in charge and being resented for it.

He tapped his steepled fingers together patiently,   
“Tell me why you think you are the right choice for this position, Gwydian.”

She tucked her hands behind her back so she wouldn't try to fidget with them or her glasses.  
“I'd probably say it's because I tried to break up the fight”  
At this, the frizzy haired boy who had his arm broken in the skirmish snorted derisively,  
“And because I wasn't a part of what caused the fight. I still don't know what it was about. I'm older than the other first years, so it's not like you’re giving command to the smallest person. I'm the only one with the gift, and I think they all know I can beat them in a one on one fight.”

“Not quite how I had reached the decision, but there's nothing there I can't deny. What was your second question?”

Gwyn had to shove back the impulse to yell. She had asked him first, and he made her answer the question, then said her answer was bad? She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember what her question was supposed to be and not the argument she wanted to have.  
“Is there any precedent for doing this? Making two sides of an argument band together like this?”

“To a certain extent that's always been the policy with fighting among pages. But this set up is more like what we did in the Navy.”

Gwyn pressed her lips together. More proof that the ocean is evil place never to be visited again.   
“Then I have no further questions, my lord.”

“Very well. You eight will go to wait outside my office, page Gwydian will receive your orders and tell you how to proceed.”

Ring leader tried to jostle her as he turned to go out, but she sunk her hips low to keep her center of gravity stable and deflected the jostle back onto him. He bounced off her, but recovered his balance fast. 

 

\---

Once the others out of the room, Gwyn resumed her careful study of the wall opposite her nose and tucked her hands behind her back again.  
“So, Page Gwydian” Lord haMinch began, “what should your lifeboat punishment be? For yourself as well as the other eight”

she blinked.  
“Sir?”

“I think you heard me just fine.”

“You want me to decide on the punishment?”

He looked at her impassivly, waiting for her to digest this.

“You want /me/ to decide on the punishment for /me/ and the others?!”  
She failed to keep her parade stance and started pacing back and forth in front of his desk,  
“I don't even know half of them!”

“I can provide you with that information, of course”

She wished he would stop being so reasonable,   
“I don't know what their strengths or weaknesses are, I don't know what their breaking points are, how on earth am I going to decide their punishment?”

“Because you're in charge.”

“No, you're in charge”

“And I've decided you're the one to set the punishments.”

She groaned and rubbed her suddenly throbbing temples  
“I break through my own physical and mental limits all the time, my lord, there is no way i'd be good at guessing what other people's limits are!”

“Why are you so worried about their limits?”

“I don't want them to break them!”

“You've already done a fine job at curtailing that.”

“By swearing at them?” Gwyn scoffed and started packing back and forth again

“By setting up Sundays to be a personal day except for punishments.”  
“Fine, then another thing I want is that if none of us have punishment duties on a sunday, all 9 of us don't have a single thing, then all of us can be granted permission to go to Chorus.”

“You seem awfully focused on preserving their moral.” He was inspecting his fingernails, the cheeky bastard.

“I am way too distracted to even know what you mean right now.” she stopped and crossed her hands in front of her chest in frustration.

“Even when I tell you that you're in charge of their punishment period, you want to make sure they have time to relax. You want to make sure there remains some hope of a privilege they should by all rights be banned from.”

“Normal people don't do too well under stress constantly and without hope, my lord” she tried to keep the temper out of her voice, but doubted she did a very good job of it.

“You have a very good grasp of that. I want to see how well you judge the punishment side.”

“Fine. Fine. Whatever you say, m’lord. Just... give me a minute.”  
she paced over to a wall and leaned her forehead against it.  
What are normal punishments for pages? The upperclassmen get weights. And extra training or classwork. Menial labor. Fucking essays.  
Extra training would make them tired, but stronger in the long run. Same with those weighted harnesses. She already had to do an essay on this, so might as well spread that around.

“Ok. One: first years are gonna start wearing those weighted harnesses, and everyone gets an extra.. weight? I don't know what the measurement on those are.  
“Two: all of us do an extra hour training session, like your conditioning stuff, every morning before breakfast.”  
“Three: fucking essays. I want them, us, to write out exactly what they did wrong. Not blaming someone else or the circumstances, not painting over things to make themselves look righteous. I did this. It was a bad thing because.. fucking... causing people pain is wrong. Or something. Not even an apology, but an admission of... fault. We're all being punished because one way or another we're all at fault, right?”

“Why those punishments?” he seemed curious. Gwyn couldn’t tell if he thought that was too much or too little punishment. 

“I've seen what upping weights does to the veteran pages, and they're gonna be mildly more sleep deprived from waking up earlier in the morning for training. And hopefully those essays will make them confront their own fucking egos. Those on top of wasting time on each others punishments will be a lot to handle for 4 months.”  
Gwyn held up a finger as she remembered something,   
“Oh, and at the banquet that's coming up, are they, I don't know how that's being handled. Are first years still doing more behind the scene stuff? We should all be doing what the first years are doing at the banquet, is what i'm saying.”

“And please, I will seriously beg you, let all this start tomorrow. Tempers are too high today. Let me just tell them what the deal is starting tomorrow and dismiss them to sulk in their own rooms. I am not even close to being ready for this sort of thing.”

“I think you'll be just fine. I'm going to verify all of these punishments you have laid out..”

“Seriously? What if I had asked for us all to get a pretty pet pony with ribons in its hair?”

“You didn't ask for that. And I doubt you would have. You had good reasons for all of your punishments.”   
Gwyn squinted at him / I don’t know if he’s giving me a compliment or not./

She started pacing again, but more methodical, a thinking pace instead of an agitated pace  
“So do I send you reports or something?”

“Page Gwydian, I see you all everyday.”

“I know fuck all about being in a command position, my lord, i'm just trying to get a feel for what you expect.”

“Keep them together, and keep them too busy to fight. Don't play favorites, and keep them too busy to question your authority”

“For four months?!”

“I think you've got the endurance to do it.”

she was more worried she'll snap and wake up with all their blood on her hands. The ominous jeering the Graveyard Hag had said to her was making her sweat now.  
“Fine. Just. I want you to know I think this is a terrible idea.”

His eyebrows lowered and he answered heavily,   
“that's not something i'm giving any weight or consideration, page.”

She sighed.  
“May I be excused?”

He stood and walked over to the door and let her out.

\----

The other pages were arrayed down the hall, what she thought of as Third's group was on one side, and the ring leader's group on the other side.  
/This was gonna suuuuuckkkk./ Gwyn looked down the future and saw a hell of winter and spring ahead of her.  
But her innate fighting instincts reared up and grinned at the challenge. She'd show the future hell, and make it beg for mercy. She might as well start now when she literally had Lord haMinch standing at her back.

“ATTENTION!” her voice was as sharp as rusted metal scraping against tile  
The boys, her boys she corrected herself, all jumped at the onslaught  
“LINE! UP!” she balled her fists at her side and willed them into compliance.

She payed attention to how they lined themselves up. They eventually got in rough order of page year. This also had the benefit of mostly separating the two groups, with the unknown first year serving as buffer. Oddly, the damn cat lined up at one end, tail wrapped around her feet and looking very pleased with herself.

“Oooh no my lads,” she chided. “This won't do at all.” she lanced out a finger at two boys and demanded “switch places” and did this again and again till she had Third and the ring leader in the middle, and had the two groups alternating down the line.  
“Now, when I say LINE UP,” she launched into that tone Corel had,   
“You're gonna form up in this line.”  
“when I say Partner Up” she gestured to the 4 pairs down the line,   
“For now those will be your partners. Those will change as the weeks go on.  
“NOW! We're all fuck ups. But since I fucked up the least, I get to tell you ducklings what to do. I'm Gwyn of Haryse a first year page.. Going down the line, INTRODUCE YOURSELVES”

The small jumps and flinches at her loud tone were immensely satisfying, she found.  
when they hesitated, she pointed at the first year she barely remembered, the one who had ran after she came in,

“Ulrik Northwatch, ma'am, a first year” This was the one that had fetched Sir haMinch. Gwyn hadn’t seen him during her part of the fight. He had a nose and forehead that were too big for his youthful face. 

“Philip of Makai, Second year” this was the frizzy haired page whose arm had been broken after Dorian and Oswald cornered him. He had frizzy light brown hair, wide mouth and eyes that slope down at the edges. It gave him a natural look of concern all the time. But it was especially pronounced now. 

“Dorian of Kennan, First Year.” her friend sounded tired and embarrassed by all this. His freckles stood out stark against his pale face. 

“Zachary of Blue Harbor, third year.” now she had a name for ring leader. He was eyeing Lord haMinch more than he was her, but that's kinda why she had kept the training master around for this. He had deep set, hooded eyes accentuated by heavy brows. With his full lips, he was almost pretty. 

“Gareth the third of Naxem! Second year!” Third was grinning at her. At least he was amused. Gwyn wasn’t sure how much of that was playing pretend to keep up a good front now though. 

“Leopold of Fitz Cove, Second year” He was the one she had wrestled with and she had dislocated her arm to get away from. He looked older than the other 2nd years she had met. 

“Oswald of Coastlight, Second year!” he belted this out with an enthusiasm she appreciated. The bruses along his cheek gave even more color to his vitiligo skin. His black eye looked like a sun dappled orchid. 

Last was  
“Nakuji Yoshirou. Third year.” she knew from etiquette class that the Yamani put their family name first, so his first name would be Yoshirou. He was the tallest in the group by a hand. His calm body language would have fit in at a art show more than at this punishment. He even sketched a shallow bow to her like any lordling might to a lady they meet at a party. 

The cat broke in before she could say anything and let out a long yowl that ended with a chirp. Gwyn stared at it and failed to cover up her laugh. She braced herself back up to attention and focused her composure back It was hard since she wanted to just keep laughing till she fell asleep. 

“Northwatch, Makai, Kennan, Blue harbor, Fitz Cove, Coastlight, Nakuji, Puffball,” she rattled off to fix them in her memory and pin their attention better, there were sniggers at the cat's name but she plowed on, louder and sharper than the amused noises  
“You all will address me as Miss Gwyn, or Auntie Gwyn.”  
“Here's what's going to happen:”

“Tonight we first years are going to get a weighted harness and the advanced years will get extra weights on their harness

“Tomorrow you all will report to my room an hour before dawn in your training clothes”

“By next Sunday you will each give me a Detailed and Exhaustive list of everything you are at fault for from this confrontation. These reports are not to be excuses or apologies, these reports are not to explain what your intentions or grievances were. We are all being punished cause we all fucked up and I won't be satisfied till you do a fucking amazing job of telling me how you fucked up and why it was wrong of a noble born knight to do the wrongs you did.”

There were some glares and confused looks, but she kept going  
“You will report to me when you are assigned extra work.

“We are going to train together, eat together, study together, and commiserate together. If we miraculously don't fuck up enough that we're allowed to go to the city on sunday, ALL of us have to earn that privilege on the same week for any of us to be able to go. I intend to visit my damn house this year, so let me tell you we are all going to pull together and escape these walls.”

“If you don't like these arrangements, I don't care.

“If you don't like what I tell you to do, I don't care.

“When we're all knights we don't get to pick and choose what our chain of command will be. For now, the chain of command is what I'll use to beat you if you go against what I say.”

“I'll see all of you tomorrow an hour before dawn at my quarters.

“DISMISSED” she stretched out the word to 4 syllables and pointed them away.

The cat stood up and eagerly trotted away, tail held high.  
The rest followed and gwyn pretended not to hear someone say this was all a stupid joke.

She turned to glare and bow at Lord haMinch. He saluted her, of all things, and she trotted off herself. She was fairly certain he was nutters. Then again, he had said he was in the navy at once point. That's a good qualification for being nutters in her book. She had to grab her stuff from the library and hurry to her room before lights out was called.


	9. Slice of Life-boat

She stayed up most of the night working on ideas and schedules for her little lifeboat of pages, and then working on the reports for Duke Gary. If she didn't get those done tonight or tomorrow, she wasn't sure she would be able to complete them with this extra shovel of manure on her plate.

“bexy?”

“hm?”

“we're going to be having company tomorrow morning. An hour before dawn. Could you make sure i'm up before that and brew enough strong tea and coffee for me and 8 others?”

“... yes. My lady. What on earth are you up to?”

“it's an assignment from Lord haMinch. I've been given a sort of comand of 8 other pages.”

“oh my lady, congratulations!”

“it's... more of a punishment really. But thank you.”

“you're such a pessimist. But yes. I can make sure that you have what you'd like. Should I get some pastries brought in for this too?”

“um, maybe some plain rolls. Nothing too heavy. We're going to be going for a hard run after coffee.”

“alright my lady.”

\---

She slept at her desk in small cat naps and roused when Bexy started getting ready for the early morning. She had almost forgotten about the assignment due tomorr- today, actually, about the proper response to seeing a fight going on that lord haMinch had given her. Her essay had two parts, what someone without any combat training should do, and what someone with combat training should do. Granted, both of those included informing a superior, which is what she hadn't done, but dammit, she was combat trained and she wasn't going to hither and dither when a fight was going on. She was sure the report rambled and probably jumped around from how tired she was.

When Bexy roused her with quiet noises of getting firewood ready and setting up water for coffee and tea, Gwyn splashed the grogginess off of her face and cleaned the sleep out of her mouth and carefully dressed.

She put away the camp bed by folding it up and hanging it from a hook on the wall. /Chairs, I need chairs. Camp chairs that fold would be good/. She thought as she pillaged Bexy's bedding to make the blankets into cushions.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee made her mind salivate.

\----

The first to arrive was Third.

“Naxem! Come on in, have a seat. I'll get extra chairs in here later on.”

“Where is your bed?” He seemed awkward with being in her room. Like he didn’t know where to stand or where to look. 

“Hanging on the wall there, hey listen. um. I um. Well I consider you a friend. And I, uh, well, I've got your back. Ok? For things that count between friends. But for this? I'm going to be riding your back and putting you through the same stuff I put the others through. And I just um,”

“Gwyn I understand, I mean, my dad and the king are best friends, and sometimes rank and nobility gets tangled up in with that and makes it complicated.”

“Ok. Thanks. I just want you to know that I didn't want this. But i'm going to do my best at it.”

“Yes, I understand. Auntie” he smirked at the title, and Gwyn grinned back,

“Right. so, have a seat.”

More trickled in, and last was Nakuji Yoshirou, lead in by Puffball. They all sat or knelt at the cushions and Bexy served them coffee or tea. Leopold of Fitzcove asked with sleepy confusion,

“What are we all doing here?”

“Just drink your tea. Have a roll. I want you energized.”

They sat in silence that Gwyn tried to drink in as much as she drank in her coffee. Mornings seemed to be the only time she got any quiet around her. 

When everyone had finished or at least put down their cups she stood,

“Alrighty my ducklings, today we're going to go on a run. Follow me now” she chimed this out sweetly. She went to the door and held it open for all of them.

“Puffball, lead the way to to where I usually go, there's a good cat.”

The cat set off at a trot and Gwyn herded from the back, pressing them to keep pace with the orange and cream tail held up like a banner.

They reached the curtain wall andGgwyn took up the leading role and lead them up the stairs. Grumbles came as she hopped up the stairs quickly. She pinpointed the loudest grumbles as coming from Philip of Makai. She vaulted over the stair rail and landed easily on the stair rail just below her, where he was trotting up the stairs

He swore at her unexpected appearance, but she interrupted,

“I'm sorry Makai, What were you saying? Sounded like you wasting your damn fool breath to me! Get the fuck up these stairs!”

She waited to see how he would take this, but was happy to see he just bowed his head and started trotting up.   
Gwyn walked up the slope of the stair railing as it switched back and forth, surveying her group. Weeks of training had gotten them all fit enough, even pudgy Third of Naxem was puffing along steadily.

“Pick up the pace, ducklings, we've a long way to go before dawn”

Puffball was nowhere around, gwyn guessed her role as mascot didn't allow for anything so undignified as work.

Satisfied at their quickened pace, she jumped and climbed up the railings to take the lead again. She kept pace with Nakuji who had taken the lead and seemed to be breathing easy.

Once they had all gotten to the top of the wall she called out orders for them to do press ups and what she called toe touches. She had them lay at their back with legs up to the sky, and lift both arms up to touch one toe, bring their truck back down, and then touch the other toe. She had a wealth of knowledge of old exercises that kept you aching but stronger for it from her time in the hospital. Some of those healers had had some interesting old manuscripts full of exercises.

Gwyn joined them of course, she wasn't going to leave her self out of it, and she hoped they would see she's doing just as much work as they were.

Those done, she urged them to stretch out their calves and thighs, then set them off to run along the wall.

“C'mon you can go faster than that! Let's go you should be nice and warmed up. This isn't a leisurely trot to class, this is a training run. Pick up those feet!”

She followed them, egging on the ones at the back of the pack, and calling back the couple that kept wanting to dash ahead and break away as the group

“Let's lift those knees, Northwatch, land on your toes and push off from them!”

“Blue Haven, I want to see the souls of your boots when you run form back here, lift those heels!”

“Oh you got a side stitch Naxen? Holding your side won't help, focus on your breathing! Exhale for three foot falls and then inhale for two! Focus on the exhales, and the inhales will take care of themselves”

“in, in, out out out!”

She kept on the prattle of encouragement and berating, not knowing where she got the wind to do it herself. The group met Ahmond as he was running back down the length of the wall. Gwyn waved at him as he passed and announced

“Right Duckies, this is our signal to head back, this guy's already run the length and is doubling back to get back to rooms before breakfast! About face!”

Ahmond had slowed, trotting in place to keep his pace, and looked at the group with confusion.  
Her group of 8 boys turned and started trudging back. Gwyn made a note of how far they had come today. She wondered if she was allowed to make a chalk line up here to encourage them to run further each time she brought them up here.

“Why the fuck are you all slouching? Chests up, head up! We get to have breakfast soon, so hurry the fuck up! If one of us is late, we're all late, so let's fucking move it along!”

The anger and threats seemed to work as well as the idea of breakfast at the end of this long run. They wanted to keep slowing down from fatigue, and honestly Gwyn would have liked to conserve her breath and let them. However she called out short bursts as she urged them to keep up their pace,

“What kind of, fuck up knights, would you be, if you couldn't, even run this far, with no fucking armor! Think your enemy, is gonna be nice? Fuckin no! Let's keep running, little ducklings!”

“you angry with me? You tired? You sweaty? Your legs hurt? Fucking Good! Use that to fill yourself up and keep going! Burn it like firewood, and use the burning in your legs to keep it going!”

Gwyn wasn't sure if she had ever talked this continuously in her abiet short memory. She kept worrying that her voice would stop working or degrade, but it kept on coming when she needed it to, so she kept on bellowing out whenever they would flag.

She was so damn thankful to Corel and Ahmond for getting her in such good shape for this.

Her legs were burning as they came to the top of the stairs,

“alright ducklings hold on a minute, you remembered what we did last time we were here? We're gonna do it again”

She lead them in more pushups, and more toe touches, and had them stretch out their legs to keep their legs from shortening up and cramping.

 

Down the stairs they went, agonizingly slow for her sense of how long this should go. Ahmond had gotten pretty good at jumping flights of stairs

“You know ducklings, if you're good, I'll teach you the shortcut I use for going down flights of stairs. It's way less boring, and goes much quicker.”

Leopold of Fitscove asked sarcastically, “is it just throwing yourself off the wall?”

“sorry? Didn't hear who you were talking to?”

“you, you damn blabbermouth girl”

Gwyn grinned at him sharply and waited till he was at a flat landing, where she grabbed him by the back of the shirt and shoved him against the wall face first

“you better fucking address me as Auntie or Haryse or I will bloody your smart ass face”

“bullying is against the palace rules!”

she lowered her voice from the bellow she had been using to an ominous rasp,

“You better believe it is, and you also better believe I am more than happy to toe that line between riding your ass to keep you in our little life boat and between bullying every damn minute of every damn day. I have my job to do and I have leave to do it as I wish. Suck it up and mind your tongue.”

“Fuck you,”

“ 'Fuck you....' you're missing something there” she chided sweetly

“Fuck you, haryse”  
“There you go, good job. Now I know who the fuck you're trying to insult. Now get a move on and let's go have breakfast.”

“Just so you know, 'Aunty'” and he put as much derision as he could into that word, “the only reason i'm not turning around and packing your ass into a pipe and smoking it is cause you're the most batshit crazy fighter i've ever seen”

“Thank you Fitzcove, I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. I'm taking it as a true compliment. Now move your ass”

She was worried he would turn around and try to deck her, but astonishingly he did move, and accelerated down to catch up with the rest.

She gauged the drop, vaulted and landed, letting the impact go up her toes, ankles, knees and hips before gauging another drop to catch up with the pack. Phillip almost tripped into Zachary when he saw her 

The bell rang to start the day as they were crossing the lawn back to the pages wing.

“c'mon ducklings, race you to the pages wing!”

She darted off, leaning into the sprint. Yoshirou soon caught up to her and passed her, long legs carrying him by almost soundlessly, or at least much quieter than her own breath. Dorian and Phillip caught up with her in a burst of speed but first Dorian and then Phillip started to lag behind. She thanked Ahmond again for being relentlessly fast so she could learn to keep up with him.

As she wiped herself down with a soapy washcloth, she stretched all of her complaining muscles. Her throat was starting to tire. All that talking while running and climbing stairs was foolish. But she had gotten a good idea of their physical endurances.

What was good for sore throats? Tea? Probably. Seemed like tea could cure a lot of things. What sort of stone would easily take an enchantment to help her voice? Hm, maybe lapis lazuli. It was pretty common in communication spellwork. With her voice probably gravel would do the trick.

She shrugged into the harness that held the training weights senior pages used.   
It was oddly comfortable. Secure feeling. It didn't feel weighty at all. Just comfy and snug around her.

Breakfast was close to normal. The lifeboat all sat at a table together, but their friends visited. Some, clearly Zachary of Blue Harbor's friends seemed hostile. Gwyn smiled at them with a cheerful viciousness when they gave Third, Dorian and Oswald dirty looks. She gave Joaquin the same treatment when he seemed about to give Zachary a talking to.

/These are my precious adopted ducklings, and I'm their goose mother and I will honk and peck you to death./

She checked with each member about any punishment work they have going on. Dorian and Yoshirou had a never ending stream of extra math homework it seemed. Ulrik had a nasty habit of falling asleep during etiquette class. Zachary was working off some weeks of extra kitchen duty from a 'philosophical debate that got out of hand'.

“Ok then my ducklings, we'll meet up and focus on mathematics outside the kitchens while Blue Haven scrubs pots and spend the time working on our stuff and helping tutor each other. After that, we will adjourn to the library to work on classwork there. I am not going to accept copying another knight in training's answers down for yourself, but it would be helpful to have another fellow knight to be look over our reports and essays and questions to do a quick check for mistakes. That should help reduce the amount of make up work we all have to do.”

Either they were too tired to grumble, or thought she had made a good point, because there was a blessed lack of back talk.

She did notice the weighted harness during training. The comforting snugness turned to light pinches and limited her range of movement more than she expected it to.

Third, Dorian and Ulrik looked like they were dragging with the unfamiliar weight. Perversely, Gwyn wanted to add more weight to hers till she got tired like they were. As much as she enjoyed being stronger than what seemed the average, she had worked incredibly hard for every bit of her strength since getting out of the hospital, she wanted to capitalize on every chance to get stronger. She knew that working till she felt weak and wobbly was one of the best ways. As long as she didn't hurt herself wobbling about, at least.

At lunch her ducklings were too wore out to do much besides eat. The friends that visited their table also seemed more interested in talking with friends than making a fuss over their friends enemies.

Gwyn was starting to feel the effects of not getting any good sleep. She had cup after cup of heavily honeyed tea, and tried to eat as much as possible. Her sleepy stomach wanted nothing to do with the food, but she knew she needed the fuel.

Classes were odd, she was far more aware of her team. She reserved a page to write notes about them and their proficiencies in classes, and when they were assigned make up work.

None of them had the gift, so for the hour she spent working with Professor Yates, they studied with Tkaa to learn about immortals. At least now she would have a good chance to learn all the stuff they were reviewing in that classroom. She had been curious about that class. Doubly curious to see what an immortal was like as a teacher. Now she could get all the benefits of seeing their notes without having to do any of the homework. 

That day in Gift lessons, they were doing practical applications of using magic to affect earth and rocks. They had been learning about different techniques to help with rock falls and landslides.

Today they were to practice busting up rocks, as though to clear a mountain path for men and horses to get through. They were all given blocks of stone that used to be stones for roads before they deteriorated beyond use and were replaced. Now they were destined to become gravel. The pages were instructed to get these rocks in pieces. The more pieces, the better. This seemed familiar to Gwyn until she remembered the day before page training started. They had done a similar thing with splitting a log into several pieces. 

/Well then, I can just do that again. Though I'll have to reinforce the threads even more to get them through stone while keeping them thin enough to cut. And I'll need to make another pass to cut them on the third axis. That way the rock will be come a nice even dice of smaller stones./

The only real difference was that this rock was much larger than the log, and it was much further away. Afraid of shrapnel the teachers had situated the students further back. Gwyn thought that this just encouraged them to blast at the rocks with too much force and create the shrapnel, but then had to laugh at herself for chiding anyone for using too much force.

/I guess when it comes to magic I have a soft touch. I don't have it with anything else in my life, so why not?/

She had to call up scores of threads to get enough to cover the large rock, and spent a little while making sure they were all evenly distributed. A little of her frustration with haMinch's strange punishment regime went a long way in sharpening and hardening the treads to be like razors. She slowly drew them down and then back up in the same path they had taken before, then turned the array like neat little soldiers turning in parade. Down and back up they went again, and now a more complicated turn so that they were stacked one on top of each other instead of side by side, but still keeping the same spacing. She pressed a palm to her temples to help her focus on the unfamiliar task.

Then the wires gently drew across and threw the stone before she let them dissipate  
.  
Gwyn let out a breath and rested her fists on her hips in satisfaction. She should practice that till she can do it quickly, one two three dice!

Professor Yates was looking at her with an interested but confused look.

He came over and they both watched the large uneven flagstone start to fall apart and seem to dissolve as gravity pulled the tiny bits down gently.

She waited for the professor to react, but quickly got impatient.

Gwyn tromped over to her diced rock and scooped up a double handful of small cubes. At her disruption, more of the flagstone sagged and dissolved to become a pile of gravel around a short wall raising above of the more stable sections of stone. They were each about the size of a fingertip. She noted with disappointment they weren't perfect cubes, she'd have to refine the technique so that everything was at a more precise right angle.

She shifted her double handful till she found a choice few blocks. Some had large veins of a darker rock, maybe flint, one looked a lot like Gloaming. It was largely grey but having speckles in all different colors of grey.

She tucked a few of these into the belt pouch of foci she brought to magic studies and headed back to the professor. She answered his questions about how she had sliced up the rock then added, 

“It's not perfect, but I think I can refine it. And I know it's really slow for now. I can work on that too.”

He cleared his throat, large adam's apple bobbing up and down.   
“Yes. See that you do. Do you think you can break a rock the way the other students are?”

“Um... I don't know. It seems to demand a large amount of energy. I can try, of course, if that is what you'd like”

“For now, yes.”

“Sure thing, professor.”

The other students had gone back to breaking their own rocks by now, she was happy to see. Tieren seemed to be crushing hers between two magical forces that turned like a mill stone. Joaquin had figured out how to get his shrapnel blasts to point in one direction instead of spreading out all over. It made an effective and nasty weapon.

Gwyn lifted another flagstone with a gesture and setting it to spinning on all three axes. She studied it like she would study a semi precious stone or gem in a jeweller's shop, letting her gift tell her about its structure, makeup, and more importantly in this instance, its weak points and faults. She mimed a punch and hit it with a whipcrack of gift. 

The stone split into 3 irregular large pieces, which freed up easier places to hit and have the rock break itself apart. Her mimed punches of power turned into finger flicks to speed up the process. With each flick the larger rocks split apart and the smaller chucks would turn independently. She soon had a cloud of gravel hovering a foot off the ground. The cloud took up a lot more space than the original flag stone had, since each smaller piece needed it's own room to spin and show her their weak points.

Pieces had fallen to the ground as she lost focus or couldn't find any easy way to split them. She was sweating even as her breath fogged into the cold autumn air.

She let her cloud rattle and clank to the ground. That had been a lot more fun to do, but much harder. She didn't think she had saved any time either.

Sure enough the bell to end class rang before Professor Yates had come back around to talk with her. 2 flagstones in an hour was pretty embarrassing. The next lowest had been Ahmed at 4. His pile was even finer gravel than hers was, a rocky sand instead of gravel. She patted him on the shoulder as they filed out

“Your work looks amazing. How were you doing it?”

“I tunneled through like the termites do, then broke apart the remains in a sand storm from what I had dug out.”

“Good gravy, that sounds... really complicated. I'm impressed”

“Really? I thought your smashing them while holding them in midair was pretty fancy.”

“Maybe, but it wore me out something fierce. I prefer the slice and dice set up I used before. I just need to work on that though.”

Tieren, Joaquin and Justin of Disarth came up and chit chatted about how they had done. It felt nice, having a group that all did things differently sharing and encouraging one another.

 

The last class of the day, ettiquite, had Gwyn making more notes about both the class and her fellow fuck ups. /Fellow Fuck-ups is such a better term than that ‘sharing a lifeboat’ business./

She had to keep herself from poking at a blemish that was threatening under the surface. Just noticeable enough to be painful without being able to do much about it. Etiquette demanded such blemishes be ignored when seen on other people, but it would be nice just to get rid of the things. 

Class was over soon enough. She waited for her fellow fuck ups to file out of the class and herded them along the way all the pages were going.

“Do you have to literally ride our ass all the time?” Zack asked her. His tone was falsely polite.

“Oh yeah, I'm sure it will be just fine if haMinch comes by and i'm not. I'm sure we'll all have a great time then.”

“So you're just going to hide behind him the whole time?”

“Why not? Besides my fists, it's the only leg I have to stand on”

“You'll get in huge trouble if you beat us up cause we disagree with you”

“Yeah I know” she glowered at him “don't talk to me like I don't know. That's why I keep reminding you about haMinch. Trust me, i'd rather be studying in the library alone than dealing with all this.”

“Why didn't you just stay out of it?” he was resentful, sure, but she thought she detected some honest curiosity. Or maybe she was just hoping he was honestly curious.

“Because what kind of knight would I be if I didn't?”

“You're not a knight yet.”

“I fucking know. Stop explaining things to me.”

“You're making weird assumptions.”

“I don't think so. We're here to be knights. Nobody here is going 'oh man, a page, just what i've always wanted. My life dream is fulfilled and now I don't have anywhere to progress' I'm not focusing on being a page, i'm setting my sights on knighthood and acting like i've already gotten it as best I can. That includes following orders I don't like. And working with people that don't like me.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“If there's something in your life that's not making it easy, why the fuck is it in your life, or why the fuck are you training to be a knight? The hard part to this should be the physical and scholarly work. Not the.. the mind set. Or motivation.”

“And yet you waited two years to start.”

“Not my choice.” she clipped each word off. Not wanting to go further down that path.

“Maybe this isn't my choice either.”

“Then the chamber will fuck you up. Whoever or whatever you think is forcing you down here isn't doing you any favors. I didn't think Blue Haven was so rigid a community to force someone into service.”-

“It's more complicated than that.”

“then I don't know what to tell you. For me, it's not complicated. It's like wanting to breathe while suffocating. I suffocated for two years till I got here, and i'm gonna still have trouble breathing free till I get my shield. So I don't think I hold any help there for you. I am still going to make you go through the motions till you figure shit out.”

He shot her a dubious look,  
“who said anything about looking to you for help?”

“Oh that's right, you started out this conversation complaining and trying to pick a fight.”  
she smiled wide and sharp at him.

He rolled large blue eyes at her and just for a moment he looked pretty handsome. His face definitely needed to be grown into, but there was some promise in his jaw and brow. And nothing wrong with big blue eyes.

 

Looking around it seemed the fellow fuck ups had dispersed to talk to their own friends or run off somewhere.   
/Damn kids. Take your eyes off them for one second and they're climbing down cliffs and up trees./   
That would make Gwyn either a shepherd or a nanny goat..

She herded them all up a little while later to accompany Blue Haven to the kitchens for his work there. Gwyn had grabbed some old tutoring tools she had brought along to the palace. Hopefully those would help Dorian of Kennan and Nakuji Yoshirou. Gwyn made sure they had both brought all their backlog of math homework. As they settled down along the hallway outside the kitchens she looked over the stack. Nakuji was making multiplication errors all over the place, and Kennan couldn't seem to balance an equation without making a silly mistake or making things overly complicated for himself.

Multiplication she had something to help with. She pulled out a stack of small pieces of parchment and looked at the top one,  
“Alright Nakuji-kun,” using the adoring ending the Yamani used for young sons or boys around town, “what is the result if I multiplied 6 by 8?”

He sighed. “less than 60? um..” he seemed to be counting in his head.

“that's pretty close. But not good enough. How did you know it was less than 60?”

He looked irritated and stubborn. She waited a few seconds more for him to answer then sighed,

“look, the only way to get good at something is to suck at it first and then keep going. There's nothing wrong with being bad at something. Surely you noticed me at archery?”  
he seemed a little mollified as he nodded.

“good now, how did you come up with less than 60?”

“well 6 times 10 is 60. and 8 is less than 10, so it would have to be less than 60 if you multipleid it by the same number.”

she grinned. “that's perfect. Yes exactly. Now, how much less than 60 would it be?”

“well.. “ he seemed frustrated and like he wanted to snap at her for embarrassing him

“nah, don't give me the exact answer, how would you figure it out?”

“count up in groups of 6 till I got 8 groups”

“that takes waaay too long. Why not count down from 60 till you have 8 groups of 6 instead of 10?”

he looked at her, a little lost.

“right, hold on.”

she pulled out a slate and some chalk from her study materials.

“say you're looking at a formation of soldiers. You can quickly count it's 6 soldiers deep by 10 long.”  
she marked out a formation of lines, quickly hashing out 6 sets of 10 along.

“how many soldiers total is that?”

she looked up when he didn't answer right away and he finally responded, “60”

“right now. How do you know that?”

“it's 6 times 10”

“exactly. ok. You notice these two lines here on either edge, they've got bows while the others don't.” she circled

“how many archers is that?”

“twelve” he answered automatically

“how do you know that?”

“you just said the two lines on the edge have bows. There's 6 on each side, so that's twelve.”

“cause it's two times six” she confirmed, putting his words into math speak, “and two times 6 is 12.”

“right ok.” he nodded. 

“now your lord wants to know how many non archers there are. How do you figure that out?”

“it would be 12 less than 60, so 48.”

“yes. Two sets of 6 less than 10 sets of 6 is 48. you know what is also 48?”  
she covered up the two sets of lines on the outside, leaving 6 soldiers deep by 8 across

“how many infantry without bows there are”

“yes goober, we just said that. But look at the board now. It's six deep. How many across?”

“eight. Cause you covered up the two at the end.”

“so... if this” she uncovered the 'archers' “is 60 cause 6 times 10 is 60, how is another way of saying this” she covered the archers backup “is 48?”

he looked at her like she was dense. “there's 6 deep, and 8 across, and twelve of the 60 are archers.”

“yep. So 6 times 8 is 48. instead of subtracting the archers from the total 60, you can just count the rank and file of the soldiers without bows and multiply.”

he frowned softly, and she hoped it was because he was thinking and absorbing what she said, and not from anger

“so this,” he laid a long olive hand down on the slate to cover up two more lines of soldiers, “is 6 times 6 soldiers. So 36?”

“exactly. And it's much faster to figure out and give answers to your commander than trying to count them as they're moving along towards your position.”

“right. Ok”

“to get you faster, use these” she handed him the stack of small pieces of parchment,

“each of these have a multiplication problem on one side, and the answer on the back. Go through these and make two stacks: one for problems you knew the answer for, and one for problems that took you a while to figure out or you got wrong for whatever reason. Then you can keep going through the ones you didn't know till you get faster at figuring them out and memorizing them. Then you can answer your commander in a situation like this,” she gestured to the chalk soldiers, “without having to do subtraction or other steps while she's waiting for the answer.”

he looked through them,

“how did you get these? Did you come up with this?”

“hell no. my tutor, a student at the university, did. She had me studying those every night till I wanted to burn them and scatter the ashes.”

he nodded, a little comforted she hoped by her shared frustration with multiplication.

“go through those while I tackle Kennan's equation headaches and then try going through your oldest math assignment.”

she looked over at the rest of her fuck ups and they were watching her strangely. None of them had started on their own work yet.

Finally Phillip of Makai asked, “do you have more of those? Could I get some?”

she shrugged, “i dont' have more, but they're easy to make. She called them study cards. I make them for all sorts of things that I want to memorize. You just cut up parchment and then have the prompt on one side and the answer on the other. They're good for studying Yamani and Scanran too. You have the word in common on one side, and the Yamani word on the other. Then you can go backwards too, reading the Yamani and trying to remember what that means in Common.”

“goddess bless” murmured Leopold of Fitzcove, “that's a life saver”

Gwyn wrinkled her nose, “i dunno, I doubt any of the masters here would slay you for saying something wrong. Just bury you in classwork.”

“right, Kennan, while they're doing stuff, what is up with these equations? They're the basis for quartermastery, and you don't seem to be able to keep a grasp on them. Fitzcove, get over here, you're a natural at this stuff.”

Leopold seemed surprised that she had noticed what he was skilled at. He could calculate weight, price, and size of materials in his head it seemed, and breezed through juggling those measurements during problems where they had to supply a theoretical outpost or army on the move.

She braced herself for him protesting or being difficult, but he just scooted over.

She let Fitzcove take the lead on tutoring Dorian of Kennan about equations. She stepped in to simplify things down for Dorian when there seemed to be a breakdown in communications between the guy who was a natural and the guy that couldn't seem to grasp it. Only helping a little kept her free to keep an eye on the others.

Phillip was copying the study cards and helping Yoshirou go through them. Third and Oswald were going over their own homework. Oswald would ask Third questions and Gwyn shuffled over to make sure they weren't sharing answers. They weren't working on the same problem though. Third was working on Trig like Gwyn herself, and Oswald was puzzling through geometry. Oswald of Coastlight was just double checking his methods of dividing up shapes to figure out how much area they covered.

Back to Dorian of Kennan, she interrupted to urge Kennan, “Write out each step. That way you can keep track and not do the same thing twice. It also helps to like, actually mark out things that you're cancelling out. So that way when you rewrite it for the next step, you know you've already dealt with it.”

“That's so much writing though.” Kennan complained

“and it's so slow” Fitzcove agreed.

“yeah but you're getting bad marks and extra work because you're either skipping steps or doing steps twice. Fitzcove here can solve these things in his head, so of course he thinks it's slow. You'll get faster the more you do it. But you'll get much better marks if you take it slow and do one thing at a time.”

Kennan groaned

“i'll never get through it.”

“nonsense. You're a knight. You can get through anything. Just think that you're fighting a math monster. It's very big. And very slow. And very tough. So you have to pick and choose your strikes and be precise about it. It won't hurt you while you're fighting it, but if you don't kill it, it will turn around and inflict more math homework on you.”

he raised an eyebrow at her,  
“gwyn. It's a math problem.”

“sorry? I didn't hear you?” she held up a hand to her ear and looked at him blankly  
“it's a math problem”

“Eh?”

“it can't be a monster”

“i'm sorry, who are you talking to?”

“aunty” with an eyeroll, “you're being ridiculous”

“nah, you just don't want to fight a math monster. What a loser knight. I bet you couldn't even figure out how to feed a squad in the mountains verses feeding a squad in a swamp.”

his face twisted with offence

“but if you fought a bunch of math monsters, who after all, are just big and slow, Not even that dangerous, you would be able to take care of a whole company of men.”

“Aunty.”

“Yes?”

 

“you're a real pain in the neck. A knee bightter. A jerk.”

“yes. Good job. I am. Now get to work, duckling, you've got a lot to do yet.”

his sour look stayed, but he did start to get to work, and was copying out things like Gwyn suggested, so she called it a win.

She turend to her own math problems to work on till someone had a question. They were working with some more abstract concepts now, graphs and some new measurements called radiens.

When Dorian of Kennan had finished his first problem, she had him double check it. It was a simple thing of plugging his answer back into the first equation given. “if it equals out, you're right. If I t doesn't equal out, you should do it over again. Cause what the math teacher will have you do is far more than one problem for each wrong one you turn in.”

grumbles met her, but wonder of wonders, he had gotten that problem correct. She clapped him on the back “excellent work. You're becoming a proper knight already”

It seemed like the hour Blue Haven was in the kitchen took ages, but he was finally released and joined them in the corridor

“Alright ducklings” she stood and bent from side to side to stretch out her spine. In her most brisk and no-nonsense tone she continued,  
“We're going to adjourn to the library to study. Naxen, grab us a table will ya? Have Coastlight grab your study materials from your room that you didn't bring here. I'll secure us some drinks and snacks while the rest of you grab your own study materials, and Blue Haven washes up. Get hopping”  
Thankfully, they hopped. Gwyn looked forward to when she could relax after giving orders instead of expecting fights every time. 

She ducked in the kitchen to request tea and some of those cold chicken sandwiches and fruit sent up to the library. The Third of Naxen would be around to receive them, she explained with a chipper smile.

That done, she raced to her rooms and then to the library. Even with the boys that were behind on their classes and burdened with work, her pile of books, manuscripts and folders of paper was the largest.

She worked through them voraciously while the fellow fuckups studied and occasionally collaborated with one another or tutored one another. She stopped a couple bickering matches between the two factions. Leopold and Oswald kept sniping at each other. So she had everyone rearrange so they were right by her. If one of them so much as rolled his eyes when the other was talking, they got flipped in the ear. 

The cat, princess puffball, joined them to study, and be fed bits of chicken. She seemed to help calm tempers as well as she would insist someone pay attention to her, or knock a book off the table if things got too heated for her liking. Gwyn treated her to bits of chicken when the cat did these things. Gwyn could use all the help she could get.

She barely felt like she had gotten anything accomplished for her own studies when lights out was called.

“I'm sure you're all aware that we pages aren't supposed to be up past lights out.” she began, “but of course, the only way they have to measure if we're up is noise and light.”

“I wouldn't ever advocate any of us deprive ourselves of our much deserved rest, but if anyone would be interested in trying out some charms I've made, I would appreciate the feedback. They are supposed to help one see in the dark well enough to read and write. Only good for one night, unfortunately at the moment, and they only let you see about an arm's length away from your eyes.”

Third was grinning “Oh yes please aunty, I'd love to try one of those out. I don't suppose you've shown my father?”

“Well, I wouldn't like to incriminate myself, but perhaps once I'm a squire.” she grinned back

She handed him a bead of amber strung with an owl feather on a bit of cotton cord, “you just need to break the cord when you want to activate it. But the magic won't hold after the next sunrise, so if you want to try it out again, you'll need to ask for another.”

“Would anyone else like to see one?”

Dorian held out a hand with determination in his eyes and chalk on his ear from fiddling with it while working on math. Philip of Coastlight took one too. Zach of Blue Haven seemed curious, but finally shook his head.

“Now remember ducklings, in no way, shape, or form am I actually advocating you stay up past lights out. Perhaps you can use these to find the privy at night or something. And I do still expect you all in my room an hour before dawn.”

They all groaned, a symphony of despair. She grinned at them all sharply. “and now I know you all heard me, so I expect to see you there. Be sure to stretch before going to bed now, you'll be much sorer in the morning if you don't.”

Gwyn really had intended to sleep. She got in her night robe and arranged herself comfortably on the. camp bed Bexy had unfolded and placed for her.

But plans and worries and dregs of ideas for the homeless report for Duke Gary kept galloping through her head.

She made herself focus on her breathing and attempted to meditate. It was a skill she wasn't too adept in. thinking of nothing is much harder than it would seem to be. But she counted how long she inhaled and counted how long she exhaled till things seemed to quiet down in her head and thoughts were meandering instead of galloping.

Still, sleep was illusive.

She gave up on it and activated the night vision enhancement on her glasses, and went to work on the homelessness report and touching up a draft of a paper.

Bexy woke her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. Gwyn had slumped down to rest her head on the desk, still holding a quill in a loose hand.

Gwyn swore quietly and thoroughly as she rubbed sleep out of her eyes and imprints from her papers and books from her cheeks.

“Sorry dear, I figured I'd let you rest while you could, hope that's alright.”

“ 's fine.” gwyn interrupted herself with a jaw creaking yawn. “I wish I could make myself be this tired at midnight and not now.. what time is it?”

“Two hours before dawn, my lady.”

“Good good. Thank you for getting me up now. I've got that meeting” another yawn, “in an hour”

“I know. Go wash up and i'll get some coffee going”

“You're the best”

Water on her face and a paste of mint, salt and baking soda got her more or less consious. Fresh clothing made her feel a bit more comfortable.

She stretched out complaining muscles and woke them up with some pull ups and lunges. She didn't tempt herself with press ups. Being flat on the floor might just catch her asleep again.

Her muscles awake and blood flowing, she sipped some coffee and tidied up the papers she had been working on earlier that morning before her nap.

Bexy opened the shutters and started a more proper fire going, preparing for the group of pages. Gwyn was impressed to see she carried some wooden camp chairs out of her sleeping quarters and set them up around the fire.

“You got chairs?”

“Yes, my lady. You wrote a note about it and I took initiative.”

“I don't know what I did to deserve you, but it was either something very saintly, or incredibly devious when i tricked a saint.”

“not both?”

“You flatterer, you.” Gwyn toasted her with a tiny coffee cup and downed the rest of the sweet and bitter ambrosia.

She could hear a cat meowing out in the corridor, so Gwyn went over and opened the door. Some of her fellow fuck ups were making their way to her room and Puffball was scratching at one of the doors down the hall. Gwyn went to the door, waving to Philip of Makai as he passed her. She cop knocked.   
Three sharp raps that almost rattled the door on its hinges. Corel had taught her that too

Sure enough, a muffled “mithros!” and sound of someone wrestling a bundle of laundry came from the other side of the door. Third opened his door dressed in just a pair of soft and loose cotton britches. He had more muscle on his arms and calves than his belly would suggest. And that part of him was pretty cute too. It seemed luxurious and homey for a warrior to have. Gwyn decided to work on her own sometime.

She grinned into his groggy and confused eyes, “Meeting duckling. Be in my room in 3 minutes or you'll be late.” she rattled off the orders in a brisk and harsh tone. She reinforced her smile to soften the message.

“oh. Yessir. Yes'm. Yes aunty.” he stumbled his brain into wakefulness.

“I'll have coffee and tea. Hop to, Naxen. We don't have all morning.” she hoped the briskness of her speech would help cut through his sleepiness.

She returned to her room to find more than one of her ducklings had already arrived.

“Nakuji, Coastlight, Makai, good morning. Help yourself to tea or coffee.”

There was a quiet murmur of polite tea making talk and Gwyn made herself a strong mug of tea with extra sugar. She had noticed over the past couple months that more than two cups of coffee at once got her stomach feeling sour.

More boys filed in and she only said quite good mornings and kept things quiet.

Third rushed in, his shirt backwards and his hair a mess, but he wasn't the last one to arrive.

She kept the room quiet with arch looks at people who talked or lifting a finger to her lips and taking a sip of tea when someone complained or asked a question. Not that there was much of that. They all looked exhausted.

The quiet stretched and then relaxed into peaceful silence.

Gwyn could almost feel her spirit stretch and lift with the quiet mixed with the sweet warmth of the tea.  
Strengthened and centered from just those few minutes, she sat her tea mug down, thanked Bexy for the lovely repast, and gathered up her ducklings.

They followed her out at a trot to an old garden wall, only about chest high on her. It was made of stone and the part she was most interested in was where it got gradually shorter. Stone blocks seemed to step down about a handspan tall at a time, and a good two feet wide. She positioned her line of ducklings by the shortest stone.

“Right ducklings, today we're not going to go for a run. Aren't you excited? Instead we're going to do some jumps. We'll all go in a line, so you'll have time to recover. But don't think i'm not going to push you on this. Now take a look,”

She hopped up onto the shortest stone, and hopped off. It was barely a jump really. Then she side stepped to hop on the next tallest and hopped off, and repeated again and again. The last one she could make was a little more than halfway to the top of the wall, and she crouched down low so her butt was almost to the ground before kicking her heels into the ground and landing on the stone. She looked down at them from her new perch,

“see how I was using both legs at once? It's not a leap or a climb. It's a jump. Try to go as high as you can, and then head back down like you came up.”

she hopped backwards and used the momentum of the fall to wind up for the next jump, and made her way back to the start of the line.

She was breathing deep by the time she arrived.

“You next Blue Haven, since you're first in line. And i'm gonna take myself to the back of the line. We'll all go through once to get a feel for it and then i'll mix it up again.”

Mixing it up basically meant having two of them going at once, one jumping from the left side of the fence, and the other jumping from the right. They got more competitive with each other that way, and there was someone right there to help out if someone slipped or missed a jump. She had to keep harping at them to use both legs at once,

“Of course it's harder that way, and less natural. You think i'm gonna have you train to do something that's easy?” she harped in her best Corel voice.

As her muscles warmed up, she could go higher up on the fence, and the oldest boys, Nakuji and Blue Haven were giving her some good competition for being able to reach the highest stone.

This day seemed pretty much a repeat of the first. Breakfast. Weighted harness. Weapons practice. Blessed sweet lunch, classes and then an afternoon packed of studying by the kitchens and then studying in the library. 

Yoshirou asked for another see in the dark charm at the end of the night, but she admitted she didn't have any more just yet. Back in her rooms, she made a few more, quickly spinning her magic along the cotton cord and between and through the amber stone and owl feather. At this rate, she'd need more owl feathers.

The next day she took them for a run, and the next she taught them how to do handstands and walk on their hands. They had trouble with that, and she wasn't going to be satisfied till they all could walk up and down stairs on their hands, which was great cause honestly she was running dry on ideas of training exercises. One day of a long merciless run along the wall and another day tottering along on their hands seemed to be fine though. 

She pretty much gave up sleeping in her bed and just slept at her desk, moving the pillow over to her study area.


	10. In Which Midwinter Festival and Chess appear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cast  
> bexy, Third, Leopold, Zach, Duke Gary. headcannons of Numair and Daine's kids

Gwyn took her ducklings  out for a run and was surprised to see snow falling. What day was it? How many weeks had she been doing this? She knew her etiquette class was in a frenzy preparing for mid winter, but it seemed strange to realize it was in a few days. If it hadn't snowed so she had to worry about finding an indoor practice activity to replace running, would she even have noticed?

The whole group seemed to have improved though. In-fighting seemed forgotten as the struggle to find enough sleep and avoid punishment duties became their sole concern. Gwyn had fallen off of her horse after not sleeping for two days straight, and they had needed to study in the stable lofts while she mucked out stables. She had worried that they would think less of her for messing up and getting them all sent to the stables, but philip of makai had actually seemed pleased. He was a natural with horses and livened up around them till he was almost goofy and silly. That spread around the group till that week was one of the nicest in the blur of her memory.

The pages' classes and training was suspended for the week of midwinter festivities. She double checked with lord haminch about suspending her extra training sessions.

“Do you think there will be trouble between them if you stop, haryse?” He asked with cool grey eyes.

“My lord, I don't even know if they remember why they're even doing this anymore. They became too exhausted to complain about the whole situation a week into the punishment and they've all noticed their afternoon classes improving with the studying I've been putting them through. Naxen and blue haven even have real philosophical discussions, not the euphemism, about law and chivalry.”

“Afternoon classes? Not the morning classes?”

“Honestly, my lord, I'm too exhausted myself to keep track of how they're doing with those. I even know they're close by as we practice and train, but I have to struggle just to remember what I'm supposed to do in the mornings.”

“I have noticed” was the stony reply. She tried not to wince at the four syllable hammer blows. The statement fell on her like a hour long reprimand. Surely she hadn’t been /that/ bad in the mornings.

“I haven't been detrimental enough to get extra lessons, even though I'm sure nobody wants me behind them in an archery line, or alongside them in a cavalry line. But I don't think I'll shame my teachers in the exams at the end of the year. I don't think any of us will”

“Any of /us/?” 

“Yes sir. The fuck ups in that life boat you talked about”

“Language, haryse.”

“Are you saying we're not f-- screw ups, my lord?”

“Tone and attitude, haryse. Watch your tongue.”

She bowed politely in defeat. Her language and tone might not be in keeping with a knight. Maybe. If she could get a week of rest, she was sure she could wrangle her manners better. 

He tapped his fingertips together. 

“You do not have to continue during midwinter. Though your earlier suggestion of keeping you at the first year level for midwinter service will happen. And any altercations that happen with or within your lifeboat will result in probation sentences for all.”

“Yes sir” it was the best she could really hope for. “I'll inform them”

Gwyn was just as pleased as her ducklings when she got to sleep in the first day of midwinter. An hour before breakfast she woke to the smell of coffee and felt opulent with the extra hour of rest. 

She wanted to celebrate not having to worry about the fuck ups today. So she grabbed her climbing gear. She fastened the climbing harness to herself, and pre-threaded the ropes she might need, the excess rope was wrapped around her middle and secured with a knot. Then she went out for a run along the rooftops. Rooftops, walls, stairwells, up and over statues and fountains, springing and bouncing from wall to wall as she climbed up or practiced controlled falls down. The air was crisp and sharp. It seemed to carve out her lungs and scrape them clean and raw. There weren't too many people around outside, though she puffed out 'good morning' to the few servants she saw.

When the bell to wake the pages clanged, she had to take stock of where she was. It was an unfamiliar place in the castle. With a quick triangulation of balor's needle and the curtain wall, she realized she was quite a ways away, and didn't know the quickest path back. She swore at herself for letting the trance of running distract her.

She climbed up the wall of the courtyard she was in, levering herself from window sill to window sill to window sill to gutters to roof.

/There, should be high enough now./ She focused on her gift and charged along the roof towards the edge. She surged her gift as she surged the muscles in her legs at the edge of the building, pushing and pulling with ropes and cables of her twilight colored gift. The jump would have been impossible without wings or magic. With satisfaction she felt her toes touch the next building as she hit it and fell into a roll along it. Her sweat wasn't doing much to cool her down, since it only freezed in the cold air. She felt like a furnace crusted with ice. But she kept delving into her gift to help with each leap.

She was pretty sure she didn't have time to go to her rooms to change before breakfast, so dashed to the dining hall directly.

Finally Gwyn reached it. She looked down from the gutters and judged the fall to the doors below. It was a leg breaker if she didn't change that. There weren't any windows or decorative ledges to exploit. She picked at the knot in her climbing ropes with fingers that felt each beat of her heart from tiny scrapes and the cold. Curses didn't seem to help any more than her fingers did, but she buckled down and focused only on that knot. Push, tug. Push, tug, tug, create slack here, tug, pull, and loose. There. 

She fixed the rope to the gutter with a loop and held tied the free end to the back of her harness, and feed the rope up her back and let it come out behind her ear. With an extra helping of magic to keep it secure, and to reinforce the gutters, she swung around and lowered herself to hang from her hands. Then she placed her feet flat on the wall and hung from just one hand to adjust the rope and get it nice and taunt. She was secured more from the tension of the rope running up her back than from her hand on the gutter, but till she got things fixed right, she was gonna hold on.

Secured with the rope in front of her in her left hand, she let go of the gutters to hold the rope free and out of the way behind her with her right. And with a gentle push from her ankles and toes, bounced off the wall to fall with control downward. Her feet met the wall again, and she folded her legs to give herself some time to check her rope before pushing off again. She gently bounced down the face of the wall, keeping her rope controlled. At the bottom she loosed the magic that was keeping her rope secure and untied the rope from behind her back. With one last tug, the rope sped up and then fell back down as it looped over the guttering. She got busy winding it back up around her. The loose dust and snow that had accumulated along the rope mixed to create a freezing black paste all around her hands.

Quickly, she dashed inside and hit up a privy to wash her face and hands to an acceptable, if not perfect, level of cleanliness. Her glasses were fogged up to blind her, so they got perched on the top of her head.

She ran along the corridors, dodging forms that were just blurs to her. She bust in just as lord haminch was entering. Technically not late, but still greeted with a chorus of growls and scowls from the pages and squires assembled.

Gwyn skidded to her normal seat and fought to control her breathing. The sweat that had iced over started to melt and she thought she would be standing in a puddle soon. Lord haminch gave them the signal to be seated. Gwyn practically dove for the carafe of fruit juice and gulped a glass down before everyone was sat down.

She poured a second and asked the table at large “can I get the milk?” Her voice was even more of a croak than usual. She was chugging the second glass of juice as she finally sat down herself. A blurry shape that might have been third passed her a glass of milk and she took that in hand and reached for the basket of muffins with her other hand. Gwyn fortified herself with a huge bite of muffin that was washed down with milk before popping up to grab a plate of scrambled eggs, fried mushrooms, and small spicey grilled sausages.

She plunked back into her seat and dug into the eggs. She almost spat them out.   
“what the fuck's with these eggs? They're gritty. Gods all damn.”

Third supplied, “... They aren’t eggs. They're grits? Cornmeal porridge.”

“Fuck, how did I mess that up”

“Put on your glasses, maybe?”

“Eh?”

She turned her head to squint at the round, pale face surrounded by a dark haze. Then she touched her face where her glasses should be in confusion. No wonder people had seemed so blurry.

Her glasses thankfully were still on the top of her head. The wire wrapped around her ears had kept them secure as she tore through the hall.

“Well damn me then.”

“What on earth have you been up to? What's with the rope and stuff?”

“Sh she climbs up walls. We first met when she was climbing the curtain wall and I was going on one of my runs up there.” Ahmond piped up

Gwyn nodded agreement and reached for a jar of strawberry jam. She drenched the grits with the jam and started shoveling them into her face. They weren't as good as eggs, but still warm. And with the jam wonderfully sweet. She moved on to concentrate on the mushrooms and sausages. When she surfaced to gulp another glass of milk she realized they were still talking about her climbing the curtain wall and had been trying to get her attention.

“Oh, uh, Yeah.  yeah. I did. I like climbing. And running along rooftops and stuff like that. I was going to try to get faster at climbing the curtain wall, but ended up leading a band of blackguards instead. But I'm still training at it with them. When we move inside after midwinter, I think I'm going to have us practice running up and along walls.”

“Gwyn. Walls are vertical? You can't run up walls.” Third explained patiently to the crazy lady

She grinned at him “you'll see. It's fun.”

“Fun? Like those burpees?” He looked terrified. At the hated word, the rest of the fuck-ups swung their heads to start paying attention to the conversation. 

Third was talking about a set of exercises that had you go from sitting like a frog on all fours, to kicking your legs out behind you into a press up position. Then doing a press up and jumping back into a frog position to do a standing jump. Then repeating that motion again and again. Gwyn liked it cause it warmed up almost every muscle in her body all at once.

“Nah, like real fun. Thumbing your nose at the laws of physics fun”

“Gods above and below, protect us” Blue Haven made the sign against evil on his chest.

Gwyn was a little surprised, Zach of Blue Haven was the one that complained the least. At least, where she could hear it. A few weeks ago she had the energy to worry about that. She had thought the ringleader against third group would be silently plotting to undermine her. But aside from their short conversation about the motivation to become a knight, she hadn't heard anything negative from him.  
She wasn't quite sure how to respond to his plea for divine protection, so she shrugged back and dug into her food. She was disappointed to see it was gone, so she got up and got a plate of eggs, actual eggs this time, and some yogurt with winter berries.

She kept wanting to ask how her group was doing, and coordinate with them so she could plan their day. But for this week, it wasn't her problem. It was a mode she hadn't thought would be natural to her, that she thought she was just imitating Corel for. But after a scant couple months it felt unnatural to keep it at bay. 

She supposed she must like having a squad of folks to boss around  and coordinate. Gwyn had always thought about going on grand adventures on her own, just her verses the worst the world could throw at her. Not having to answer to anyone but the king like the Lioness did. But maybe being part of the chain of command wouldn't be so bad after all. 

Gwyn kept quiet in her own thoughts till breakfast was over, and then ran off to her rooms. She was astounded that sir haMinch hadn't called her over to reprimand her for her attire. Though Gwyn wasn't going to wait around to see if he would change his mind. Her skin felt itchy after cooling down in sweaty clothes, and her muscles were upset at not being stretched out after such a hard workout. Her left ankle and both shoulders especially protested while she scrubbed down standing in the bathtub.

After drying off, she had a heavy, leaden feeling of not knowing what to do next. She liked routine. She liked the structure of her studies gave her day. Maybe she could stay in and do some reading, or maybe she could go down to the practice courts and see if anyone else was keeping to the normal activity of training this time of day. Maybe she could swing by the royal library and have a real talk with Duke Gary. She had gotten to talk with him on a couple occasions since turning in her reports on homelessness statistics and assistance plans, but only for a minute or two while passing in hallways. An actual discussion over coffee sounded great. She should make some sort of plan. But there seemed to be too many options.

“Uk, first things first Gwyn” she scolded herself, “stretch out like you should have after the run. Then you can decide what you want to do.”

She took her time stretching things out and was frustrated by how tight she seemed to be. She was certainly out of practice of stretching each night before bed. Most of the time she didn't even make it to bed before she fell asleep. She resolved to spend this week lengthening her muscles back out, and to stretch once she was in her room for the night, before diving into classwork.

Her muscles seemed to murmur contentedly after a lengthy stretching session. The idea of leaving the room seemed to go against that quiet contentment. So, feeling incredibly lavish and spoiled rotten, she wrapped up in her sleeping robe, and laid out on her actual bed, not slumped over her desk, and closed her eyes. She soaked in the feeling of being a pampered court lady and slipped into sleep.

Everything felt like lead when she woke up. Bexy was knitting by the fireplace, and late morning light streamed through the windows and fell right on Gwyn's eyes. She blinked and groaned.

“My lady,” bexy's knitting was put down “i was surprised to see you here. Is everything alright?”

Gwyn grunted wearily.

“I'll make you some coffee then, shall I ?”

Gwyn's stomach flopped over sourly. The idea of food, even coffee, seemed terrible. She shook her head and slowly moved one limb at a time to get out of the camp bed.

Bexy looked worried, and gwyn didn't really blame her.

“Perhaps you should see a healer, my lady. I don't think i've ever seen you sleep in or refuse your beloved coffee.” Bexy tried an encouraging smile.

“I probably just slept too much. Still groggy. I'll wake up soon. Or something.”

Gwyn tried to pacify her friend. She really didn't want to deal with healers or having a concerned friend.  
She eased her wooden legs to the wash stand and scrubbed the sleep out of her skin. The familiar lavender soap urged her to wake up and get moving. But she didn't have anywhere to move to.

“I don't think a life of luxury and leisure are for me, Bexy. I get really, I dunno, bored. Grumpy, despondent that's the word, when I don't have anything to do.”

“What would you tell your pack of feral boys to do right now?”

Gwyn shrugged and scrunched up her mouth. “to leave me alone. It's a holiday. Wouldn't they have something better to do than hang around here?”

Damn holidays. That the nights and days got longer and shorter as the year progressed was mildly interesting when she thought about it, but it seemed silly to make the longest night holy. Or at least, holy enough to get a week long holiday of doing nothing but dressing fancy and eating a lot. If it was a celebration of squires becoming knights or something like that, then maybe she would feel different. Surely then there would be lots of things to do if it was celebrating that.

She screwed the heel of both her hands into her eyes and tried to focus on the colors and lights behind her eyelids instead of those bitter thoughts.

“Water repellent charm. That's what i'm going to work on” she declared after three breaths.

“Then after lunch, i'm off to the royal library to play chess with the duke if he's free. Or to read up on magical methods of controlling water if he's not.”

“Feel better?” Bexy asked

Gwyn didn't really. But she nodded to reassure Bexy.

She forced herself to carefully string beads on a needle and sew them together the way Bexy and the cook had shown her her first winter. She had been crawling the walls wanting to get out of the townhouse, but the snow and ice and her own still poor condition had kept her inside. She was terrible at beading. But she had loved the stones and glass and gems to keep at it. Even today the needle resisted going cleanly through the lapis lazuli bead. She suspected it was cause she kept getting distracted by the small threads of different colors twisting through the bead instead of watching the needle. The small pin pricks didn't even draw blood anymore though. Her fingers had nice calluses from climbing, and even more now from the intense weapons practice.

It was very distracting though. Having to focus on getting one damn bead and then another damn bead on. Then looping the needle through the holes again in different patterns till the strand of one bead after another eventually became a flat tear drop shape.

 

Or.. not a flat tear drop shape. Gwyn sighed, cut the thread and let the beads spill of the line. She threaded a new line through the needle with her precious needle threader, and went at it again. She focused on keeping the proper tension more this time. It was hard as her irritation at the beads kept her wanting to strangle the whole mess till it choked. She forced herself to be meticulous. Holding the beads gently in place with two fingers while pulling the thread through properly.

She had one flat tear drop complete and was working on her third try of the second when Bexy interrupted with a cup of tea.

“Best be getting ready for lunch now, m'lady.”

“Thank goodness” Gwyn stretched her neck out and felt it pop several times. 

She continued stretched her back and took the cup of tea into the changing room with her. Happy to leave the frustrating and beautiful craft behind for now. But It had been a good distraction from her empty schedule.

At lunch almost all the food smelled terrible as the idea of coffee had seemed. She wasn't sure why. Even the classic Tortalian food that she normally ate smelled bad. She took a couple links of spicy sausage and some roasted onion, carrot, and potato along with a couple rolls. The carrots and potatoes tasted alright, but they felt like ashy clay in her mouth. She swallowed one bite and it almost came right back up on her. She didn't really want to try the sausage. So she buttered some rolls and tried them. They just felt bland. Which was a relief from wanting to vomit. She got up again while her friends talked to look for something else that might be palatable.

The boys stared at her plate when she came back. Gwyn had 5 honey and cinnamon baked apples crowded on her plate and a hazelnut pastry crowning on top. Along with three more biscuits and a pot of spicy hot pepper jelly she had snagged.

She slathered butter and pepper jelly on the biscuits and dug into the apples. These thankfully tasted and felt lovely.

They boys kept looking at her sideways and sharing looks at each other. But the mix of spicy and sweet got her too distracted to really think about it till one spoke up.

“Gwyn... you... feeling ok? You're not … on your cycle, are you?” Leopold was the safest as he was furthest away from her and across the table.

Even so, she  slung a pear at him

“God fucking dammit. Can't a lady celebrate a holiday away from you fuckers with having whatever she wants for lunch without getting her womb thrown in her face? God damn it you little watery shit”  
at this torrent of swearing, they seemed to relax.

“Just checking it was really you and you were doing alright.”

“No thanks to your rude ass.”

“So what's with the sweet tooth?”

“It's a holiday, isn't' it?” Gwyn bared her teeth at him and caressed her table knife gently with a fingertip

“Never mind. Never mind.” he swallowed and focused on his vegetables.

Third, brave from being her sponsor and actual friend, tried to distract her from staring death into Leopold.  
“You did save some for the rest of the pages, didn't you? They smell amazing. And what's that jam? Is it mint?”

She passed the clear and faintly green stuff over to him, and he sniffed and tried a bit on the tip of his spoon.  
His coughs and pleas for water or the quick release of death had everyone smiling and laughing, and distracted from Gwyn’s strange mood. 

\---

She still wasn't sure if she was overly full, or still hungry after lunch. It wasn't something she felt was worth bothering the healers about though. So she made her way to the royal library. The librarian, Faile, was a gorgeous lady with bronze skin and her hair and forehead covered with a bazhir veil, said that Duke Gareth wasn't back from lunch, but would be expected later. Gwyn stretched for more reasons to keep her soft and flowing voice to keep talking, and asked to see some books on water mage craft, or books written by mages that specialized in magical water workings.

They chatted lightly as the delightfully pear shaped librarian walked her over to the magical section and selected a couple volumes for Gwyn. Gwyn covertly watched her walk away. She adored how Faile's hips were wider than her shoulders.

Unfortunately, the books on water magic were mostly about creating more water or directing water currents and flows. There was lots on damming rivers, or reducing floods, or enhancing irrigation, or encouraging rainfall. There were entire sections she skipped because they had to do with oceans and seas, and one entire book on tides that she shoved aside. Gwyn decided her best bet might be rereading the sections on reducing floods when someone set a cup of tea down by her elbow. She murmured a quiet thanks and took up the mug before blinking at it stupidly. It wasn't her normal mug. And Bexy hadn't said anything to her when she gave her the drink?

Gwyn looked to her side and blanched. Duke Gary was smiling down at her in a royal blue tunic with sky blue trim. Gwyn's legs popped her out of the chair and she was bowing over her tea cup to him before she could even worry about what to do.

“Your grace!  I didn't hear you come close. I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to ignore your presence. I got lost in some research. I was hoping I would see you actually.”

“I figured as much when you didn't answer beyond 'that's fine' when I said hello a few minutes ago. So, Page Gwydian, What are you working on?”

“I mean, um.” she swallowed a curse word at her jangled nerves, “Water control. With the gift. Your grace. For a water repellant charm.”

“Water repellant? Now that could be useful. Especially with supply trains and shipping food and paper. That could save a lot of grief.”

“Uh... I was more wanting to avoid getting wet when it rained. But. um. I suppose if I can figure out how to do it for a person, I could figure out how to do it for a wagon?”

“That's the spirit. You never know till you try. And I've found people are likely to succeed if they try. If you find yourself in a break with your research, I'd be happy to talk more with you. But don't let me intrude.”

“Honestly, I felt like I was beating my head against a wall. None of these really deal with what I was thinking of doing. This is a good of time as any.”

“In that case, Page Gwydian, would you care to indulge me in a game of chess? I'd like to clear my mind after the meeting I just finished. I feel like I just spent a few hours herding cats.”

Gwyn thought her smile probably reached her temples “I'd be honored, your grace. And please feel free to call me page Gwyn. Let me just collect my notes”

She neatly stacked up the books and secured her notes. By then she could drain the tea cup in an indelicate and just a bit too warm gulp. Her insides felt like magma as she followed the duke to his habitual study room.

“The chess board is in the corner there, beside the folios of maps.” Duke Gary indicated.

To say this study room was neat and organized would be... a lie.

There were stacks leaning on stacks to prop up a large rolled up map as tall as Gwyn in the far corner. She carefully extracted the lovely wooden chess set from beside, below, and behind the bundles of vellum and parchment tied up with string in bundles. Each bundle labeled with a province or country or sea. While she did this, Duke Gary shifted the books and scrolls on his desk around. He rearranged and stacked them like a mason building a wall. But a good section of the desk was cleared.

She set the chess set down and carefully unlatched it and unfolded it. The set was its own box. The outside of the box had the board inlaid on it, and the inside of the box housed the pieces when they weren't being used. The pieces were gorgeous marble and very stylized and simplified. They seemed to be made to show off the stone instead of the carving ability, and gwyn appreciated that very much. The delicate veins in the marble might have been obscured by fine detailed sculptures. Even though the shapes were simple, they were all graceful curves polished smoother than glass.

Duke Gary's gentle throat clearing prompted her out of her study of the pieces. She shared her dazed smile with him.

“These are lovely. I'm smitten.”

“I'm glad you noticed. I have the name of the trader I got them from around here somewhere. If I find it I'll let you know.”

“Thank you your grace.” She would love to talk shop with the creator of this set. How they got such perfect polish was an art.

They set up and he hid a black and a white pawn behind his back and had her choose one of his arms. He revealed a black pawn for her and so he had the first move with the white pieces.

Gwyn had played some chess with Corel and Miss Sokera back when she was first recuperating. And a couple times with Stefain. But nobody compared to playing chess with Duke Gary. His face and demeanor stayed warm and bland though his hands moved like vipers. She knew from previous games with him that he never seemed to need to consider or plan his moves. As soon as she let go of her piece, his hands would flash and then it would be her turn again. Gwyn had to admit it was more than a bit intimidating. She had given up hope of ever beating him in a game, so just worked on trying to figure out what he was doing and tried to absorb some of his obvious mastery. Mostly it just left her feeling dumb and blind. Though today she was either feeling extra aggressive or maybe that meeting of the duke's had been particularly distracting, because she actually got him in check. He chuckled and reached a hand out to shake hers in congratulations. Then he blocked the path of her threatening bishop and had her in checkmate in two moves.

She saluted him with her empty teacup in defeat.

Ice broken with the first game of chess, they set up for the second match and started to chat. He wanted to know about the group she was leading among the pages, and how this unique punishment was working out. She wanted to know how useful her reports on homelessness had been, and if there had been anything to come from that.

“I had really liked doing that research. I liked feeling like I might be helping the kingdom. Or at least the city.”

“Even though it was just going through reports and sifting information?” she wasn't sure if he was testing her or just honestly surprised.

“Yes, definitely. I don't think fighting bandits or immortals is the only way to protect the weak. If sifting through and writing reports will help someone get shelter and food, then that could help keep them from deciding to turn to banditry out of desperation.”

“That's a good point. Though most people, most knights, would think it lacks a certain amount of glory.”  
gwyn shrugged uncomfortably. She didn't really want to say that glory was a nice way of saying bloodshed and killing.

“I guess I'd rather fight Starvation and Malady. Plenty of other knights are fighting Slaughter.”

He caught her reference to the Three Sorrows. “I think Daine can agree. She asked the duck mole Broadfoot to fight Malady off when the Lady of Chaos was trying to escape her realm”

Gwyn also remembered that she wanted to talk to Daine about the Graveyard hag. She could probably do that with the endless week of rest ahead of her.

Distracted, she let her queen get caught in a fork between a white knight and a white rook. She sighed and let herself think that at least she had lasted this long in the chess game. Without the flexible protection of her Queen, her defensive line was toast. 

“Is Daine going to be around this week? I doubt I'll have time when there isn't a holiday break”

“Maybe. Usually she, Numair, and their children go down south to Numairs home. But you could probably meet up with her the day or two before normalcy returns.”

“I don't think I've seen their children? I mean, I’ve seen Daine with some riders on occasion and Numair in classes obviously, but ..?”

“Their eldest travels around all over. She went to the copper isles to study the shape changing crows last I heard. But I wouldn't be surprised if she got distracted and has been living in an ocean reef for the past few months.” Gwyn tried to hide a shudder.

“Kitten and their second visited the dragon lands oh... three years ago? I'm not sure when we're supposed to expect them back. Numair said dragons live on a much different time schedule than even other immortals do. Perhaps Kitten will stay longer than Alex and you can meet them. You remind me of them a little. You’re just as headstrong about what you want to do with your life.”

“And their youngest joined the riders, so you’ve probably seen him. Clint, or Clive or.. I can’t recall his name right now. I wonder about him sometimes. Unlike his older siblings, he doesn't seem to take after either of his parents' magic. Though he shoots just as well as Daine does. I suppose I expected both of their magical talents to continue uninterrupted through their blood line. But of course the Gift doesn’t work like that.”

“I wish I actually had time to like, get to know other people around the palace. With lessons and corralling the other 8 pages as punishment work, I don't seem to get anything I want accomplished done.”

“Well it is punishment work” he reminded

“Yes, your grace, I know. It's working.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, now I know not to leave any witnesses and get out of the situation before I get caught” Gwyn grinned triumphantly

He made a funny noise and his face froze

“It was a joke, your grace, you can laugh”

He kept quiet, but rubbed his eyes and shook mildly. She could see the laugh lines around his cheeks and crows feet deepening though. After a silent chuckle he asked,

“So you have learned to avoid fights you don't need to be included in?”

“I... don't agree that is a lesson that is in keeping with the rest of the schooling we're getting here. Knights are the ones to impart their own judgement on a situation. Especially combat situations. We're the localized justice system of wherever we go, in the king's name. You can't expect someone who wants to be a knight to not interfere with a combat situation.”

“But you did have standing orders not to do so within the palace grounds while you're a page. Following orders of your king and your superiors is also a valuable lesson.”

“Failing to interfere in an altercation that my fellow pages are involved in so that the altercation is brought to a halt is a greater failure than failing to follow orders not to fight.” Gwyn paused to reflect on that. Had she gotten that right? Talking in a negative sense was confusing. Before she could re-phrase, the Duke continued the conversation, 

“So they've already broken the rule not to fight. Therefore it's not as big a deal for you to break that rule also?”

“They're training us in combat. Of course pages are going to fight. We're training our bodies to fight, and to respond to stimuli by fighting. They're training our judgement on when and how to fight. There's nothing that I did that I wouldn't do over again. I can accept that I deserve punishment for it, because of some more abstract rules and regulations. However, what I did was the right thing to do. Maybe it's egotistical or prideful or wrong to think that. But I wouldn't change my actions.”

“That's rather resolute and inflexible thinking” he sounded a bit concerned.

“Maybe you're right. How's that for flexible thinking? I can consider other options, but they don't sit well with me. They aren't burdens I want to carry. I like this burden. I'll carry it. It'll make me stronger so I can carry heavier burdens later on.”

“That's an interesting philosophy. But one that might get you squished later on.”

“I've already escaped certain death once. It's not that i'm banking on escaping it again, but all of this is just borrowed time anyway.”

She grimaced, this isn't really what she wanted to be talking about.

He seemed to notice, being the king's advisor and a diplomat didn't come from nothing it seemed.  
She followed his change of topics to other things and they played another game of chess discussing the trade agreements of coffee beans, and how likely it would be to start growing coffee crops in Tortall.

=====

Gwyn kept to her decision to focus on her flexibility, and by midwinter she could ease slowly into the splits. She kept her runs to after breakfast. In the afternoon she would study in the royal library. She only got to talk with duke Gary a couple more times the whole week, but she didn't feel too disappointed when he didn't show. The royal library was just that huge and lovely.

The height of midwinter meant the midwinter banquet and exchanging gifts.  
Gwyn had made each of her ducklings a night vision charm and bought them each a bag of sweets. Joaquim got some coffee from her, and she decided to offer an olive branch to Ermengarde in the form of a night vision charm and a hair tie with aquamarine and copper beads. There was a short letter in her nicest handwriting explaining how the night vision charm worked, and explaining that the hair tie would deliver a numbing shock to anyone who pulled her hair painfully while it was tying her hair. The charm should last until it had delivered 50 shocks.

Ahmond she gave a grappling hook, a climbing harness, and a good length of rope along with a promise to teach him how to use all of it.

Bexy got a book and some soft as clouds baby alpaca yarn. The other servants at the town house got a week's worth of salary and a personalized letter from her.

In return she got about 5 lbs of coffee. A few from her ducklings, one from bexy, one from Joaquim, and another from duke Gary. She also got a book explaining boxing and wrestling techniques from Corel, and a bazhir book of war songs from Ahmond.

She was absolutely delighted to find a plain wrapped package with only 'happy midwinter wishes, lady page' on the tag. She recognized that this was something Kel had received from lady knight alanna unknowingly throughout her page and squire years. It seemed the lioness or maybe lady knight kel herself were continuing on the tradition.

Inside was two books. One a book on healing techniques with the gift, and one that detailed yamani weapons and weapon forms. She felt like crying in happiness. It seemed both of them had sent her something. Alanna was a famed healer as much as she was a famed fighter. And kel's signature weapon was the yamani naginata.

\----

After the excitement of the gift exchanges, the banquet was boring and far too long. Gwyn had only been to one of these banquets when she lived in corus. Last year she had shattered her leg and hand trying to burn off some steam during a run. And her first year she had been still recovering from the shipwreck.

The first year pages stood by the edges of things, they were the ferriers of full and empty plates of food from the kitchens to the veteran pages that actually served the dignitaries and royalty. Her fellow fuck ups, even the veterans were among the ferriers. It was boring work, but easy. She wasn't sure why people were so nervous about it, but blamed overstimulation of it being so important an event. She tried to calm people down by saying 'it's just a plate of roast lamb. It's not going to do anything on its own.” and “they're dirty dishes, not live chickens.” “the hallway isn't lined with the queen's dresses. You're not going to ruin anything when you're carrying soup down it.” She wasn't sure how successful she was. The professor of etiquette seemed more nervous than anyone else. She wished he would just calm down and stop infecting people with his panic.

Her fellow fuck ups didn't drop anything or manage to poison anyone, so at least they were spared any extra punishments.

Gwyn stayed up all night reading from each of her new books. The book on magical healing seemed to focus more on bolstering the first aid she already knew. They hadn't studied much healing magic in the classroom yet, so she didn't think any of this was far outside her understanding. She resolved to try this spell to ease the hurt of bruising as often as she could. The morning trainings during the week gave her plenty to practice with.

The book on Yamani weapons was an eye opener. She hadn't seen many of these in practice yet. Some seemed stylized versions of weapons used in Tortall, but there were some like the kusarigama, a sickle attached to a long length of chain, and a long blunt length of studded iron called a kanabou that were new to her. With Gwyn’s manual dexterity, she figured she would cut herself to ribbons using the ultra flexible and quick kusarigama. But that kanabou had promise. 

They had been studying music in etiquette class, and Gwyn wasn't very good at actually playing the lap harp or flute she had been training on. But she could read music fairly well. It was just another form of charted information. Much like geometry in math.    
With that baseline, the book of war chants was very interesting to look through. About half were in a language she didn't know. Bazhiri she assumed, or maybe something older. Gwyn assumed Ahmond would know. Maybe he could translate or teach her how to pronounce things properly. Some of the songs were scary and blood thirsty, but most seemed melancholy. Songs to be sung after battle was over. Even the songs of triumph had sad parts that honored the fallen. It was strange and it was absolutely beautiful. She was happy Ahmond had thought to give her something that she loved when she hadn't even known it existed. 

The new books made the rest of the empty week go by quickly. Gwyn was as thankful for that as for the new information she learned.   
Numair came back to the palace the day before classes started up, but unfortunately Daine had been called away to the south east.


	11. In Which Music is Discussed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cast: Gwyn, Ermengarde, Chipper the Cardinal
> 
> Led Zeppelin exists in all universes.

Finally the normal routine started back up. Fueled by a thousand coffee beans and feeling more natural with her schedule tightly in place, Gwyn worked herself to the bone and then sharpened her bones into knives. Horsemanship still felt unnatural, but she could do alright at mounted combat and tilting. Perhaps around the worst in the group, but she thought she could at least hold people off until she could dismount safely. Archery she was definitely the worst still. She could hit the target most of the time, but with nothing akin to deadly accuracy. She worked hard at it. Archery was part of the testing at the end of each page year, and she had to pass.

Another test they had to do was a musical performance. Gwyn wasn't much good at the lute or lap harp or recorder or violin or horn. So… any of the classic instruments in a knight’s education. She never could get her fingers to connect to what her eyes read on the page. The instructor kept trying with her, he was as patient as he was exacting of standards. He seemed to believe that the ability was something everyone had, they just needed time to realize it. Drums were really the only thing she was good at. She enjoyed how wonderfully loud they could be. Horn was her second choice, but she wasn't sure she could really coax anything approaching music from the thing.

A couple days after midwinter, Ermengarde surprised her by coming up to Gwyn's group of pages. A songbird clung to her shoulder, stark red that clashed and amplified the vibrant aqua color of her eyes.

Eyes that looked right at Gwyn without the tenseness that Gwyn expected to see. Maybe her olive branch gift had helped things? Gwyn could only hope.

“Sorry to intrude, could I speak with you a moment, Gwydian?”

Gwyn stood up without seeming to actually pass through any space

“Sure, yes, anything. Here? Or away? From these hooligans, I mean. Wherever is fine. For me. If it's fine for you.”  
Gwyn had to bite her lip to keep from talking more

“Perhaps we could talk over a cup of tea. Whenever it's convenient for you. I understand you have other things to attend to.”

/Damn she was just so calm and collected and speaking in full sentences./ Gwyn pushed her envy away,   
“They can attend to themselves. I'm free now.”

Maybe she was being too eager. But she didn't really feel like being uneager. She pulled her hands apart to keep from fidgeting

“All right, then perhaps we could meet in the store room for instruments?”

“Ok good. We could both go? I mean, I know where it is. I mean, we're both going from here to there right now?”

Something suspiciously like a snigger came from behind her. As much as she wanted to turn around and snuff out the source, she was worried that breaking line of sight with Ermengarde would make her disappear.

Ermengarde snuffed out the sound herself with a perfectly delivered arch look to somewhere behind Gwyn's elbow.   
Oswald muttered a sheepish “Sorry m’lady”

“Shall we then?” She half turned, and her long hair swayed from a single horse tail. Gwyn couldn't help the wide, bright smile at seeing the hair band she had made gleaming against the white stream of perfect hair.

Gwyn's body stuttered into life and she lurched forward a couple steps and offered her elbow to Ermengarde in the appropriate 'escorting a lady one has just become acquainted with' posture that the young lords were taught. There were a couple muffled sounds that could be choked back giggles and a couple soft dull thuds and shushes behind her, but Gwyn only half noticed. She'd have plenty of time to be embarrassed later. Right now she was too interested in how the red song bird, was it a cardinal?, and Ermengarde were looking at her with the same exact expression. Both their heads were tilted the same angle. Absolutely adorable. 

 

She finally set a couple cool and callused fingertips on the correct position along Gwyn's forearm, and Gwyn's smile sunk deeper and warmer into contentment.

They strolled out the library and toward the kitchens.

The songbird blurred its wings to land on the shoulder closer to Gwyn. The better to inspect her, she supposed. Gwyn inspected it back with one eye.

“I'm afraid I don't know what sort of bird you are. I thought most birds went south for winter?”

it lectured her with a series of peeps. But they were more complicated than just 'peep.' it went,  
'tzuu tzuu, wheep wheep wheep tzuuu'

“i uh, i'm not as smart as Daine. Sorry there. You mind if I ask your perch more about you?”

'Tzuuu tzuuu' with a fluttering hop, it landed on Gwyn's shoulder and gently pecked at the shoulder seam of her tunic

“fuck, you move fast. Stars and stones. No wonder you can get away with that bright color during winter”

a flash of aquamarine caught her attention past the bird, and Gwyn almost swallowed her tongue at the sight of Ermengarde smiling playfully

“this is Chipper. He's a cardinal. He and his mate, Curious, nest right by my window.”

“Oh” was the most intelligent thing Gwyn could manage to say, and even then she wasn't sure she didn't fuck it up.

“a few other pairs have joined them for the winter, but they seem to split up into pairs the rest of the year”

“Oh.” Gwyn further elaborated. Showing interest and respect with her piquant conversations skills. 

A gentle pressure on the inside of her arm made Gwyn slow and kick her brain back into gear. They were by the kitchens, in a large open space with tables and fireplaces around. It was one of the resting stops people pulled into for a quick snack or chat. Tea was always available, and usually quite fresh from the high turn over. Ermengarde steered her over to a table by a wall expertly. It was supposed to be assumed that the person holding out their arm was leading the person holding onto them. But really, it was much easier for the person holding on to apply pressure to give subtle direction. Subtly giving direction with one's entire arm either wasn't easy, or wasn't subtle. It was still expected of lords, so that’s why they studied in etiquette class. 

“You look a little peaked. Go ahead and sit down, and I'll get us some tea.”

Gwyn might have made a weak protest, but found herself sitting as the piercing eyes went away toward the fireplace. She took a couple empty mugs and poured tea from a heavy kettle warming by the fire. Under a cloth in a basket were some rolls and crocks of honey. A few of those went on a plate and she floated back with perfect poise and posture. Gwyn was quite happy she didn't have to try to walk and carry something at the same time right now. Sitting and getting her breath seemed hard enough.

Gwyn rubbed her palms on her trouser legs and tried to stop being a ninny. She did outrank Ermengarde, after all. Even if no one would guess that in a million years. 

A full tea mug and a biscuit were placed in front of her, and the same across from her. The last biscuit was split in half and placed in front of Chipper, who pecked delicately and rapidly at it between studies of the two humans he was with.

Gwyn spooned honey into her tea and gulped it down. It was too hot. But she was a bit too tonguetied to do anything else.

“You're probably wondering why I asked to talk to you. Things between us have probably seened a bit tense.” Ermengarde smoothly said into the silence. 

“Mm hm?” where was that version of her that had talked so calmly and rationally to the king? Argued with the king even. Maybe she could just pretend Ermengarde was royalty and all these awkward stumbling feelings would lesson.

“Well, I have asked Master Windcrest about the music exam at the end of the year.”

“Mm hm?” god damned she really needed to think of something else to say

“He mentioned that besides the instruments we have been learning, students could also sing”

A small click seemed to go through Gwyn's brain. She nodded.  
“right I think I remember that. Also that there could be ensembles. I keep meaning to ask Sir haMinch if the fu-fellows have to perform all together. I hope not cause only half of us have any musical tallent. The rest of us would ruin it for them”  
/There, finally! Full sentences!/

“Well you might want to ask him soon then. There isn't that much time if you want to start coordinating practices and the like.”

“Oh. Yeah I suppose.”

Gwyn took another sip of tea, and her brain clicked over again,  
“Uh, I doubt that's what you wanted to talk about though?”

“Right, yes I was wanting to ask you if you would consider a duet with me.”

“Come again?” Gwyn blinked blankly at her

“Would you be interested in singing a duet with me, for the exam at the end of the year?”

“Me? Sing. Have you heard me talk? I sound like a rusty saw. You don't want me to sing with you.”

“Of course I've heard you talk, silly. I believe the different qualities in our voices would be very suitable to the right song.”

“And you already have a song picked out? And you want me, with no singing experience, to sing with you.” Gwyn tried to heap on as much doubt as she could. She wanted to make sure Ermengarde was serious and not just having  a laugh somehow. 

“You understand music just fine, I've noticed you can hum the music better than you can get it out through an instrument. I have thought of a song that would work well with a lower register along with a higher register”

“But lower register isn't the only problem. My voice gives out all the time”

“It used to, but you've probably been shouting encouragement at those boys for months now and I haven't heard your voice falter in weeks”

“uh, you, you pay attention to my voice?”

“it's rather distinctive, Gwydian. Your encouragement can get rather loud at times. It's hard not to notice”

Gwyn rubbed at the back of her neck,  
“Uh huh. I guess if people noticed they would have said something before now”

Ermengarde shrugged one shoulder in response, which caused some delicate shifts in shadow along her collarbone that Gwyn tried to memorize. She’d never thought collarbones could be interesting before. 

“So,” Gwyn cleared her throat, “what song?”

“You mean you’re interested?” aquamarine light stabbed Gwyn in place.

“Well, I'm certainly curious. And uh, I appreciate the offer. So I want to take you up on it”

“Good. ‘The Battle of Evermore’ ”

“I haven't heard of it”

Exasperation flashed across Ermengarde's face. “it's quite famous.”

“Well, I might recognize it if I hear it. But I don't know the name. I didn't catch up on any music, or study it till I got here at the palace” Gwyn held back the urge to apologize for irritating her. She wasn't going to be sorry that she worked her ass off catching up on as much as she had in the short time before she started page training.

“I can get you the music sheets tonight, and then I'd like to schedule a time to go over it together in the next two days”

“ can make that work.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

Awkwardness descended like a wet blanket.

“Thanks for thinking of me. For this duet.”

there was a bit of a pause while Ermengarde finally put some honey on her biscuit  
“Thank you for the Midwinter gift. I had gotten you one... I didn't get it to you in time for the holiday. I'm sorry.”

“I haven't exactly been pleasant to be around. I probably have it.. I dunno if i'd say easier, but maybe cleaner, time with people who didn’t know me, um, before. I am probably a bit less confusing to new people in my life than people who were expecting one thing and getting something completely different.”

“I can understand that confusion. But you're not going to apologize for being unpleasant to be around?”

“i apologized for yelling at you that first day.” Gwyn defended, “but no. not really. I don't have any interest in being pleasant. I want to help people survive bad things. And fight for what's right. Maybe i'll be pleasant if that's the weapon I need at the time. That probably seems silly to you, cause you obviously have worked hard on being graceful and polite, and you know how to use those qualities to the best advantage. I’m still trying to figure out basics. I’m still forging myself instead of working on polishing the rough edges.” 

Ermengarde silently sipped at her tea for a long moment,   
“Do you mind if I share some advice? About your idea of weaponizing manners.”

Gwyn waited for her to continue, then realized Ermengarde actually expected an answer,  
“Right, no, go ahead.”

“I was taught that feeling an emotion isn’t a reason to show it, or let it affect my decisions. Just like being hot or cold should affect my decisions. If I feel annoyed, I don’t need to show it or even act on it. Much like having a knife doesn’t mean I need to act with it or show it off. I can just.. Have it.” she shrugged.   
“It’s especially useful to keep in mind with Yamani court trained people. It does take some work, and you’re right, i have worked at it. It helps prevent problems from even becoming an issue. I think it’s useful.”

Gwyn nodded slowly. It made sense, but it sounded unnatural. Like having to hold her breath in order to talk to people.   
“Well, I’ll keep it in mind…” she didn’t know what else to say.   
“Thanks.” Gwyn tried a smile and pointedly shifted her attention to Chipper and asked some questions about him.   
Ermengarde seemed happy to talk about her little friend. He was a cardinal like Gwyn had guessed. 

They each had another cup of tea while talking about palace animals, and then split off. Gwyn back to her ducklings, and Ermengarde to the music library to get copies of that song she was interested in.


	12. In Which the First Year Ends

As the days got longer and the group she lead got more comfortable working as a group, they started holding extra practice sessions outside. Third helped them practice swordsmanship, he had studied it practically since he could walk. Phillip helped with all manner of mounted combat. Gwyn thought he was odd, cause give him a sword on the ground, and Third or Zach could beat him easily. But on a horse he was the best swordsman in the group. Yoshirou lead them in practices of yamani throws and grabs. Gwyn taught what she knew of boxing and wrestling. Leopold was also really good at those, but pole arms were where he shone. He explained that Fitzcove had a herd of ferries that operated by poling the barges across the ferries and along the canals. The polemen who guided the ferries across would do tricks with the huge things while on shore and he had learned from watching them. He added those tricks to their quarterstaff and spear training.  Oswald and Zach were the best archers of the group, and Gwyn relied on their extra tutoring quite a lot. Dorain and Ulric, the two youngest in the group, doggedly practiced and practiced and asked for more. With so many teachers focused on them, they progressed much faster than the other first year pages. 

The etiquette teacher decided against Sir haMinch, and had them practice for their music test separately. For a scant half hour a day Gwyn was free of her ducklings, and found herself in the much preferred, but more nerve wracking company of Ermengarde. The song she had chosen was an old, old ballad about a country preparing for war, as far as Gwyn could tell. It read like old poetry where the meaning was buried in layers of metaphor. 

The routine of early morning coffee, herding the boys for training in climbing and tumbling, weapons practice, classes, classwork, and more weapons practice ate away at the weeks. They became a finely tuned machine. At last a week passed without a single incident among all of them. 

The Sunday they all got a free pass to the city, she invited them all to her home for dinner. Natalie, her cook at home, was delighted. The next Sunday a couple weeks later they went window shopping through the finest armorers and blacksmiths.  
They made plans for the next Sunday they would all get to go to the city but then suddenly it was time for the exams. It seemed impossible that spring was finally ending. 

Like the midwinter festivities, it seemed the major enemy to fight was nerves, not the exam itself. Gwyn was worried the questions were too simple, so expanded on the subjects and tried to offer alternative points of view but was cut short. There were a lot of pages to test, and first year testing tried to go by fast so that the fourth year pages could have plenty of time. 

Music was part of the academic testing, and Gwyn felt especially nervous about it. If she messed up, she’d also be messing up Ermengarde’s marks. Gwyn tried to remember she didn’t need to sound nervous just cause she felt nervous, like her duet partner had said months ago. She had to start things off, and it still took her a while to work up to it. Once she said the first word, the rest lined up and came out, and it became a song. Ermengarde’s smooth voice floated over Gwyn’s rougher one. All the nervousness she had felt transmuted into delight.   
/this must be what having fun and being happy feels like/  
They finished the song with a couple long wordless notes that harmonized well, and bowed. People clapped! Gwyn reached out and hugged Ermengarde without thinking about it. This was certainly one of the nicest moments she could remember. 

Next for Gwyn though, was archery. She gritted her teeth and silently and viciously frothed cuss words during the archery test. All the rage she was trying to channel didn't improve her accuracy any, but she liked to think it kept the judges from failing her. Gloaming was as sweet as honeyed milk during the mounted combat sections, and that made everything twice as easy. 

For testing in the gift, she quietly swore into her hands and then barked an order for a witch light to appear. Then she breezed through explaining the theory behind communicating between two mirrors at different locations, and demonstrated by talking to Numair in a mirror she was provided. The long distance communication was easier than the dang witch light, cause no one complained if she used magical symbols to focus her gift for that exercise. 

 

Everyone passed, as expected. There was a special feast when the new squires moved from the page tables to the squire tables. And they had 3 days to prepare for the pages' summer trip. Two weeks north, camping in the mountains for two weeks, then a two week trek back to the castle. From there, the pages could return home to help with the harvests and return again.

\--------------

Gwyn knocked on each of her fellow fuck up's doors to gather them up one last time.  
“Alright my ducklings, you're my ducklings no longer. You all did wonderfully as far as I'm concerned and let's please _not_ do this again next year, alright? I'd really rather do my own shit and not have to exhaust a whole bunch of youngins like yourselves. To celebrate, who would like to help me drink some of this plum sake I found?”

There were nervous grins and loud whoops at the sight of alcohol.

Gwyn found the sweet liquor mostly made her louder, and dizzier. Which wasn't a feeling she liked. It felt too much like the room was swaying on the sea. Third's nose turned strawberry red and he would spout poetry randomly, and Yoshirou, Leopold, Oswald, and Zachary kept singing sea shanties, each one more sleazy or raucous than the last. Ulric shut them all up with a song about a Scanran wearing a kilt and a blue ribbon. Well, to say he shut them up was to say they stopped singing sea shanties and only sung that song for the rest of the night.

The next day she was expecting a headache or worse, but just felt like her mouth had grown hair and a desert was in her eyes. Maybe hangovers only happen when drinking ale.

\--------------

Bexy and Gwyn headed down to Corus to get Bexy settled back in the town house, and say a round of congratulations, thank yous, and well wishes with the house. She babbled about her books to her tutor that had come to visit for the occasion, and talked Corel's ear off about how wonderful a teacher Sir Kel is at staff work. Princess Pumpkin Puffball was instructed to stay at the townhouse, but only licked her hind foot at the order. Gwyn really didn't know what to do with that cat.

The last morning of days at the castle, she climbed up the curtain wall again. Her legs still shook with the effort, and her hands burned with gripping the stone for so long, but it still felt better than it had her first day. She felt strong and powerful sitting at the top of the wall. Her legs dangled out over the castle while she grinned and hummed a triumphant tune.


	13. Summer Break in the Mountains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hiking, tai chi, immortals, terribly translated Russian, hyrdophobia
> 
> Cast:Tieren of Queenscove, 3rd year page; Justin of Disarth, third year; Ivan of Veldine, 2nd year; Ulrik of Northwatch, first year. and gwyn

Heading up into the mountains in May meant a lot of rain, a lot of mud, and a lot of pollen in the air. There were some white trumpet shaped flowers in particular that caused Gwyn's nose and eyes to itch every time they passed them.

The rain though was the worst part. Everyone knew she was particularly testy in the rain. She kept well to the front of the line, so she didn't have to see anyone but the professors, and ignored all the irritating chatter behind her. She shrugged deep into her oiled cloak and whispered charms to keep dry from the evil water.

When Sir haMinch called a halt for the night, Sir Kel, Tieren, Ermengarde and Gwyn set up a circle of tents around their own campfire. Sir Kel handed Gwyn a trowel,  
“As the youngest, you'll set up our latrine. I can show you what sort of area to look for and how if you'd like”

“I would appreciate that, sir. I'm a city girl, all this nature just makes my nose itch. Uh, and actually Ermengarde is the youngest. I started my training at age 12.”

“Oh of course. I knew that. I meant to say most junior and not youngest. Well, sorry bout that, and let me show you how to manage in the woods.”

Sir Kel was very tall, with shoulders that kept going and going. She walked casually through the woods and managed to be much quieter than Gwyn, who was trying not to make too much noise. Gwyn's city trained boots weren't having anything to do with that endeavor though. They declared her presence and wanted to walk in artificially straight lines all the time instead of adapting to the forest's more organic and quiet paths. Gwyn could understand this. She just couldn’t get herself to do anything else. 

Latrine dug, Gwyn fiddled for a bit setting up her tent. The first bit required a lot of balancing of the poles before everything got tied down securely on the stakes pounded into the ground. The girls made dinner for themselves over their fire. Ermengarde seemed to have made friends with some of the palace birds, a mated pair of cardinals, who followed her on the journey. Sir Kel still had descendants of her old sparrow flock following her around, and the smaller birds seemed to school the much larger cardinals in the ways of camping with a page.

Gwyn had tried to petition to bring a folding camp bed like she had used all year instead of a normal bed roll, but was told 'pages on camping trips use bedrolls. Need to get used to roughing it' she had wanted to point out the all important camp part of camp bed, but it's not like she wasn't used to bed rolls.

Bedrolls on uneven ground, surrounded by the incredibly noisy and unpredictable sounds of the forest were another thing. Gwyn scowled at the inside of her tent and wedged a hand under her bedroll to take out a rock for the hundredth time.

She wished she could just stand watch and drink coffee all night instead of having to try to relax with all these critters screaming at each other around her. Every breath she took multiplied her mental inventory of bugs inside the bed roll.

She finally gave up on sleeping in the torture device and peeked outside her tent. The moon was half full and would be growing as they head up north. The fire, the only familiar sound besides pages and teachers snoring, was warm glowing coals. Gwyn folded the bedroll in two, and sat on the much thicker cushion. With her bed robe tucked around her comfortably, she watched the moon progress across the opening in her tent. She tried to focus only on the relative position of the moon and the contented mutters and snaps of the near by fires. The wild critters were still loud and interrupted her far too often, but some relaxation found its way to Gwyn. She woke up as someone stirred close by, Tieren was waking up before the sun. Gwyn stretched and rubbed where her elbows had dug into her legs while her chin was propped up in her hands.

Tieren swung her arms back and forth in a loose, swishy motion. Like the swaying of trees rather than something designed to be efficient by people. Then she stood quietly and very slowly, with that same looseness, started a sequence of movements. Gwyn thought maybe she was just randomly lifting arms and shifting her weight till she recognized an achingly slow low block and low punch. The whole thing looked like Tieren was trying to fight the air, without causing any air ripples to alert her enemy of her movement. Coming back to the starting position, Tieren let out a satisfied sigh and stretched her arms up and up even more. Gwyn yawned loudly just to see the stretch. In one movement, swift but somehow lazy, Tieren was looking at her with a knife in one hand and a soft green glow hovering over the other palm.

“Hey” Gwyn murmured to her like she would to Gloaming, so as to not further spook the older page.

“Hay is for horses” Tieren replied back, just as soft. The knife was gone like it had never been there.  
Gwyn stood up and snagged her kit from her tent,

“Want any tea?” she offered

“Sure. I'll make it though. mother sent my favorite along for the trip”

Gwyn rubbed her nose and tried to ignore a pang. It was such a casual mention of being able to benefit from motherly affection. With a sigh she responded,  
“Please pass my thanks along. Your mother knows good tea. What was that tree dance you were doing?”

“Tree dance?”

“All slow and loose, like leaves floating down or swaying in the breeze” Gwyn moved a hand out slow and smooth, petting an imaginary horse

“I didn't take you for a poet, Gwyn”

“I have many talents” with a lusty wink to cover any blushes, Gwyn unpacked her kit and started making breakfast for the small camp while Tieren made tea.  
“It's called Tai Chi. It's one of the martial arts the yamani developed. But this one is more for meditation and balance than fighting.”

“But you're meditating and learning to balance with blocks and strikes, so it's like, in bedding it deep in your head to use later”

“I suppose there's something to that. I like it for waking up cause it's not too rigorous but still gets me moving. More serious practitioners use it at full speed for fighting too.”

“My morning meditation is usually over a cup of coffee. Can you teach me that chai tea, wait no, tai chi? It looks interesting.”

“I don't mind. Especially if you show me how you work your enchantments so well.”

“Done” Gwyn held out a hand to shake on it

Before they could do anything more that morning, Sir Kel woke and set them to tasks and then suddenly it was time to move deeper into the mountains.

The next morning she learned she was very bad at tai chi. The whole thing seemed to be about relaxing. That was never a trait of hers she could remember.

“Why don't you teach it to me fast and then once I know the movements we can slow down?”

“It's not supposed to be done fast. Just relax your fingers till they're limp, and make your elbows and shoulders limp too.”

Gwyn tried, but it was obvious it didn't match. She much preferred her own muscle straining exercises where she could feel herself working. The motions were strange, full of circles where Gwyn was used to straight lines. 

The next day the group had arrived at base camp in the mountains. Sir haMinch divided them up into small teams and sent them out to map the area. The mountain they were camped on wasn’t far away from the foothills. So it’s slopes weren’t as impressive as Gwyn was hoping they would be. She had been excited to use her climbing gear, but it didn’t seem likely. 

She jogged over to a shaggy tree to met up with the other pages in her team. Ulrik she knew as one of her ducklings, and she grinned at him. Now they were both merely first year pages and on equal footing. His wide mouth stretched to a grin and he offered a fist for a fist bump. One day, he would grow into that nose and look distinguished like Numair, but probably not for another 8 years or so. Ivan she recognized from his smirk and freckles. She vaguely remembered this second year page as being bothersome when she had first started training, but with the lifeboat situation, he had stopped being a concern. Justin was their leader. He had just finished his third year of page training and looked like he was trying to grow out a goatee to celebrate. It actually suited his tall build and shaggy hair. He seemed almost slovenly unkempt, but tall and muscular enough that you wouldn’t want to make fun of him for it. Gwyn had seen him in classes, and even worked with him in the class for mage work, but not enough to really learn much about him.

 

Justin sized them all up and nodded,  
“Alright everyone, let’s get to work. We’ve got the southwest quadrant, so should have plenty of sunlight and time to do this well. Gwyn, you’re gonna be in charge of this,” he handed her a mirror for far-speaking,  
“Ulrik, you got the writing pad? Good. So you can make the rough map. Note major landmarks and write down the measurements the rest of us give you. It doesn't’ have to be pretty.  
“I’m gonna lead and explain what we’re doing as we go. “

Mostly what they did was a lot- A Lot- of counting. They measured elevation in Justin’s height, since he was the tallest of them. Gwyn felt practically useless. Ivan and Justin would point out animal tracks, or distinctive trees. Gwyn would look at the same places they saw and just see dirt and any tree they pointed out just looked like a Pine tree. Ivan even tried to explain the difference between a pine, spruce, and fir tree, but even with his help, they all looked like pines to her. When they had gotten high enough that trees were sparcer, she felt more useful. She could differentiate between gneiss and granite. Then it was her turn to show the difference to a befuddled Ivan the differences between those two, and mudstone and dolomite rock. 

Next was more counting. It had gotten hot without any shade trees around. Gwyn felt sticky and bored of counting paces. 

 

A few hours into the hike, the group crested a rise. They stopped at the top to note the change in elevation on the map and compare measurements so far. Further ahead, Gwyn spotted an interesting formation. She couldn’t immediately identify the rocks. They were eroded rocks like plates stacked haphazardly on top of another. It was by far the most interesting thing they had come across since Ivan had tried to convince her and Ulrik that some animal droppings were rare and expensive truffles. 

They counted even more steps from the rise to the rock formation. Gwyn eagerly went to press her hands against the weird, precarious looking rock plates. She shoved, but none of them moved or shifted.  
“They look like a stack of dishes, but they’re actually one piece that got eroded in this weird pattern. I don’t recognize it though. Maybe it is a kind of flint?”  
She broke off a half moon chunk from one of the plates. 

“Well, it’s as good a place to have lunch as any. I’m sure the locals know what it is, and better, where it is. When we get back we can double check our maps.” Justin seemed pleased.

Gwyn wanted to explore more. This was finally interesting and not just counting endlessly. But Ulrikh was already unpacking food and waterskins from their stuff. As she helped unpack, she smelt something musty.  
“Did one of the waterskins leak? It smells, I dunno, not like mountain air. Anyone else getting that?”

“If you farted, i’m gonna put you in a headlock” Ivan threatened. 

“I.. oh dang missed chance. I totally should have. That would have almost made up for the truffle thing you tried to pull. No it’s not that. Something else.”

Nobody else seemed to notice it, and her comment just incited a fart noise competition. Gwyn didn’t win, but Justin shared a couple of his secrets for truly loud, gross sounding noises. 

Gwyn used the mirror to far speak with the base camp after lunch. The four year page-turned-geographer she talked to took a while to pinpoint their location. But after a while he said it sounded they were at a place up in the mountains called the Giant’s Linen Closet.  
“Huh, they really look more like plates than sheets, but sure. Well, where should we head from here?”

“Well your team has done a pretty good job of going in one direction. So if you turn along the Linen Closet, then it will lead you to a valley. You can follow that back to camp.”

“South east along the closet, and then north-ish along the valley?” Gwyn confirmed

“That’s what I said. Look, 3 other groups are reporting in. Check back in if you think you’re lost or someone’s hurt.” the communication with the frazzled teen ended in a flash of his soft teal gift. 

Gwyn explained the suggested route to the rest of the group and they set off. Counting again. Not all of the formation was as haphazard or circular as what they had first found, so thinking of the rocks as folded sheets started to make sense after a while. 

Up ahead, and above on one of the stacks, Justin skids and slips as a layer goes free beneath him. Gwyn braces to catch him, but only needs to catch a falling rock. Justin had caught his balance just fine up there.  
/so the layers can break free, i thought it was just the edges that had eroded, but maybe after enough time a whole section can flake/-

The ground under the four of them shifted and then fell in on itself. 

\---

They were dumped in a narrow, dark fissure. Gwyn reached out on both hands as they fell several Justin Lengths down. But the strata flaked and broke and cut into her hands. She might as well been trying to keep herself from sliding down sand. She could hear the others falling and cursing as they tried to catch themselves too. 

The fissure got wider after two Justin heights and there was a free fall to the bottom, followed by a long, noisy, shower of chunks of rock.

Gwyn landed on her toes, and rolled along her back to absorb the shock. Rocks landed on her, and one in particular smashed into her elbow, and she felt it cut into her arm.  
It knocked her off balance, so instead of a smooth roll she hit her shoulder blades hard and her breath got knocked out of her. More rocks fell as she struggled to get her breath back. She could hear the other pages exclaiming from impacts.

Gwyn swears and that bad smell fills her lungs. Musty, wet, mildew, and fresh water. She shifts and tries to look around, but all that gets her is a scraped hand plunged into freezing cold water. 

She tries to thrash away. There’s rocks holding her legs down and pressing against her elbow. She's gonna fall further in, or get knocked in by debris, or the water level will creep up. Trapped, she'll be trapped by rocks and encroaching water while everyone else drowns around her.

Her trashing against the rocks pinning her legs wrenches her knee something awful.  
The pain helped focus and clear her head. With a heave and a kick with her good leg, she sent the rock toppling over into the water. The splash made her want to throw up her lunch. 

Gwyn staggers upright, wincing at every flex of her knee.  
It's so dark. The sky is just a steely blue sliver overhead. 

“Sound off!” in her sargent voice. 

“Ow.” Ulrik sounds muffled and strained. But nearby, “I'm pinned over here.”

Overlapping his reply was “What in Mithros’s name happened?” from Justin.  
/ok that’s two/ Gwyn thought, 

“Ivan? Ivan!” Gwyn shouts, and the shout echos around in her own voice, but no snarky reply. 

“Gwyn I’m gonna need you to calm down. I can’t focus on this spell with you hollering and freaking out.” Justin’s voice was tense, but even. 

A long, knock down drag out fight with her self control alter, Gwyn saw several witch lights formed in her field of vision, down and to the right about 30 paces away. They glowed dull red at first with Justin’s gift, then brightened and rose up in the air, and spread out to provide a nice even light. Gwyn allowed herself a moment of jealousy. Five witchlights at a time wasn’t something she could manage. 

The space they were in was a wide corridor of stone with gravel carpet, and striated rock walls. A trickle of a creek slithered along the carpet, but it had been disturbed by the rock fall. Pools and tiny waterfalls were starting to form where the water got dammed by the rocks

Gwyn’s gaze got transfixed as a tiny pool spilled out from a hollow of gravel and started flooding another hollow. The red light of Justin’s spell made it a miniscule flood of blood. Gwyn felt her jaw unclench,

/so i’m more comfortable with a stream of blood, but not water. What an idiotic phobia./  
But she could use that idea. She made herself believe they were down stream, no, down hill from a wounded giant that was bleeding into their canyon. After all, they were in the Giant’s Linen Closet. Wounded giant. Not under water stream. Her panic hesitantly retreated, ready to come back, but for now, she could focus on the problem of the rock fall and injured friends. 

Justin was bent and straining to hold up a boulder, and Ulrik was scooting out from under the boulder. Gwyn went forward to help and immediately fell flat on her face. Her bad knee had buckled. She cursed and gently touched her bleeding nose and busted cheekbone. They weren’t bad. And hey, the smell of blood helped her illusion of the water being blood. Fantastic. All according to the plan. 

But she wouldn’t be able to help her friends with this bad leg. She eased over onto her side and inspected it.  
The skin was only scraped. Gentle prodding didn’t feel like broken bones. But it was starting to swell and felt hot to the touch. Gwyn wished she could do any form of healing magic. The classes they had done at the palace had not gone well. Either she or the person she was trying to heal, and on two occasions Both, ended up in the hospital wing after she tried a healing. Justin had better luck, but she wanted to have him save his gift for Ivan and Ulrik. 

She reached out with her gift to the gravel around her. It was fine and smooth, like a thick sand. The wetness from the stream of… She shook her head and redirected that thought. The wetness in the area meant it clung to itself. And her clothes were almost muddy from the fine, wet gravel. Gwyn nodded to herself and started scooping up handfuls and carefully patting them around her knee. When she had a thick covering from her upper thigh to her boot. She focused on the covering of muddy gravel with her gift and fused the fine bits of gravel into one continuous rock. Her hands added extra material where her sense of the new rock piece seemed weak or thin. 

Gwyn carefully stood up. Her rock creation around her bad knee held just fine. It was like a plaster cast, but far more itchy and uncomfortable. Still, it would support her. 

Ulrik had slithered completely from under the rock that had pinned him. He and Justin were looking around the rock pile and calling for Ivan. 

“Hang on guys, I’ve got an idea.”

Gwyn limped over to the pile and put both hands on a flat plate of shale. She sent her gift through that plate, and then jumped to the shards of rock it was touching, and then from there into the rocks those were touching. 

She let her gift show here where the rocks were, and after a breath, she could see where the rocks were absent. There was a hollow that could fit a teenager a few steps away. 

“I think I found him. Here, let me try something to make digging him out easier.”

She could still feel all the connections between the rocks in debris. So Gwyn fused them together like she had her cast. Now they wouldn’t shift or collapse further as they got Ivan out. 

Gwyn wiped beads of sweat off her forehead with her sleeve. It only left a film of grime behind. Everything here was so gross with all this blood everywhere. 

She took a deep breath, cracked her neck and put her hands back on the newly made giant rock formation. 

Carefully she started cracking and fragmenting the rock into smaller and smaller pieces. She knew exactly where to apply pressure, and how things would crack with the insight from her gift. All she had to do was make small hammer blows with her gift.

It took some long minutes to reach that hollow she had sensed before. She was glad he hadn’t ended up in the middle of the rock pile. Even the few steps away he had been were very densely packed with those thin plates of rock. 

 

She had reached the hollow and was dimly aware of two squishy forms clearing away the fine mineral pieces she was making. Her gift showed her semi precious stones that were trapped in the matrix of the gneiss and shale, and there were even a couple fossilized creatures. She wanted to focus on those, and on the bits of copper and iron ore. They seemed so bright and interesting. Where as the hollow was just something squishy. It had some calcium and iron, sure, but certainly nothing bright or as interesting as that opal right there. Wow look at that. She reached with her gift toward it and had to pinch her wrist. This was no time to get distracted by some jewelry! Gwyn berated herself for getting swept up and being vapid during a rescue operation. Of all the times in the world to get sidetracked by pretty rocks!

They carefully pulled Ivan out once he was visible. Justin checked over the unconscious boy with his gift,  
"Nasty bruises, but I can't sense anything broken. His biggest problem is the concussion. I can try to help lesson the bruising, but concussions are pretty advanced healing magic. I’ll do a sleep spell to help the healing along," His scraggly goatee in the rusty red glow of his gift made Justin seem a lot older. 

"Maybe just do the bruises around his ribs and if he's got any around his head or face. We're all pretty healthy, he should bounce back after the concussion."

Justin nodded and pulled at his earlobe like he did when he thought hard. His red gift seeped out and clouded around Ivan's torso and head. Gwyn was happy to see some red, fresh bruises fade and spread into colorful splotches of purple and yellow.

"That should be fine, Justin, you'll wanna save your strength. I don't think I can climb out of this rift, and I think i've got the most experience climbing. We'll have to find another way out."

"Right. We need to fashion a litter for Ivan and scout the area-"

Gwyn cut him off, "I can carry him. It'll be easier than using a litter on this rough terrain, and-"

Ulrik cut her off in turn, "you've got a bad leg, Gwyn. there's no reason for you to -"

Justin interrupted with a point about navigating narrow or low passage ways being easier with a litter.

They stopped taking turns interrupting and just talked over each other for a long while.

Honestly it felt nice to vent by getting angry at someone who's opinion she could probably change instead of focusing on the situation that seemed less mutable to her wishes.

Gwyn did her best to loom over Ulrik's lanky tall build. It was difficult to loom over someone who is eye to eye with you, but she did her best. He had no right questioning her strength dammit. It was the one thing she felt like she could do to help and she wasn't letting a duckling take that away.

"Alright everybody shut up!" Justin clapped his hands on their shoulders sharply. the only sound for a second was the echo of that clap running down the crevice.

"Gwyn, you're gonna carry Ivan. When you start faltering or if there's an area too small for that, you're in charge of making a litter. Ulrik, you're gonna pull the litter she makes. I'm leading the way and keeping things well lit for us. What we need to do now is find a way to go. Ulrik, you scout downstream, I’m going upstream. Gwyn, you’re finding the far speaking mirror and letting them know what happened back at camp."

He waited for them to nod. Ulrik had the grace to look embarrassed for arguing in the middle of a bad situation. Gwyn stifled her urge to argue with the boy that was put in charge and giving orders. /She/ wanted to be the one giving orders. But since she hadn’t had the sense of mind to remember the far-speaking mirror, she just saluted.

Satisfied, Justin raised his arms off their shoulders. Gwyn saw Ulrik's shoulder was glowing a strong red light in the shape of a palm print where Justin's hand had been, and then noticed the light on her own shoulder. Very tidily done. Now they had orders, and light to use while they worked.

She moved Ivan well away from the stream and propped his head up with a couple sections of rock. Then she turned to survey the area. She only had the dull red light to see by. Her pack had gotten shredded in the fall, so she didn’t have anything but some straps and a rag on her back. /better than having a shredded back I guess/ 

She activated the night vision charm on her glasses and did a slow circuit of the area. She found Ivan’s pack from where they dug him out, and his wasn’t in very bad shape. Papers in various stages of water damage were easy to find too. She created a small pile of stuff over by Ivan. 

/You’d think I could find a fucking reflective ass piece of glass gods be damned/ Gwyn fumed. Maybe she could look for it with her gift. Glass was a sort of crystal. And crystals were the things she was best with, after all. 

She did another circuit, just in case, turning over stones and focusing where they had fallen in.  
She found some more supplies, but nothing that would help immediately. She added to her pile, then sat down by Ivan’s head. 

She couldn’t sit cross legged to meditate like she had been taught, and that mixed with the slow slithering sound of water made her irritated. It took a while to get settled with her bad leg angled out awkwardly. She fumed internally at herself, at caves, at Justin for not letting her argue more to vent, and especially at Ivan for getting hurt. But as she fumed, she breathed in for a fast count to seven, held it for a vindictive count of seven, and swore at the exhale for another count of seven. 

The swearing became more quiet, the counts became more even and slow as she settled into her meditation. 

Her gift remained a deep, rich reserve inside her despite the amount she had used to get Ivan out safe. She hadn’t ever managed to deplete those reserves. She’d even been surprised that people could run out of magical power and need to rest in order to get back to normal levels. Then again, she used her magic in strings and tendrils where other people used globs and ropes of power. So while she never ran out of power, there were things, like creating five witchlights at a time, that she just couldn’t manage.  
“Focus damnit” she chided herself with an exhaled breath. 

The next slow inhale she tapped a thread of magic against her glasses, then sent out a spool to create a web. As she held her breath, she grew the web to spread out along the ground and along the walls. Tiny crystals and gems became evident to her, and bruises of metallic ore in the rock. 

“Glass, looking for glass, not riches” she reminded herself again as she breathed out. 

Her net grew slowly, a couple inches a breath. Still she felt like she was making good progress. The web saw much better than her night vision since it could penetrate through rock. 

She found out the wall she was sitting closest too had an opening, or perhaps this cave they were in forked would be a better way to put it. The wide opening took several breaths to bridge with her web. The alien feeling of water trickled along it too, eroding away at the gravel she was looking through. It made the rocks shiver and her skin crawl. It took a few breaths for her to get over the sensation. Then she was off looking through her gift again. She progressed more quickly after a while. Glass was different enough from the local minerals she felt confident in speeding up. 

Something put pressure on her bicep and squeezed. Gwyn flung her eyes open with a yell and went to draw her knife.

Justin winced at the yell that was still echoing

“God’s teeth woman. You don’t answer to me talking to you and then scream like that?”

“I was /meditating/ you ass” she snarled

“I could see that.” he snapped back. “Goddess are you ever calm? “

Gwyn tried to think of a good come back, but couldn’t think of one before he continued,

“I found a tunnel further upstream that looks promising. I saw light, and I think it will head to the valley we were going to. Once Ulrik gets back we should head that way.”

Gwyn sighed and gestured at the things she had found,  
“I didn’t find the mirror, but some food and papers. My pack was pretty much ruined, but Ivan’s was ok. I stuck things in there for now. Oh, and I’m mostly calm in a library with some tea to drink.” there. That was sort of a come back.

He rolled his eyes. “Damn first year pages. Insufferable”

There was a hurried scratching scraping noise from downstream. Justin muttered under his breath, and a couple witchlights rose and drifted over toward the sound. Gwyn just focused on standing back up.  
Luckily, the noise was just Ulrik returning. His knife was drawn and he looked battle ready. 

“Oh” he stopped short, “I thought I heard Gwyn scream”

“For fuck’s sake goddamned fuckers I was fucking meditating you airheads and I came out of it staring straight at Justin’s facial hair” Gwyn vented in a long breath. 

The lads shared a look with each other. Justin shook his head slightly and shrugged. Ulrik shrugged in response. “Anyway, I found the mirror, but it’s cracked.”

“Blast” Justin thumped a fist into his palm. “Well we should still try. Let me have a look at it”

“Justin,” Gwyn tried a more reasonable tone than swearing and berrating, “you should save your gift. I can’t heal worth a damn or make light very well. I can try talking.”

“You were just using a whole bunch of power, i felt it. You should save your own reserves.” he sounded reasonable. So Gwyn tried not to snap at him,

“Again, you’ve got the more useful gifts in this situation. My reserves are fine. I’m not lying. Let me see it.”

\---------------

The problem was trying to make it visual. She was sure. She just needed to change up the enchantment so that it would only be noise, and not a picture. The mirror kept showing nonsense. 

Gwyn bit her lip to focus on some pain, and then sent that focus into the spell casting. She twisted her gift around itself, like wire she would make into jewelry to enchant. 

“Fucking damn. Ok. Once more. Then you can try. Or we can just go to that tunnel you mentioned earlier”

“What tunnel?” Ulrik asked.

Gwyn let Justin answer and smacked the back of the mirror against her stone cast on her knee. More glass broke, but one piece popped out. She fished it out from it’s fellows and held it up. It was just as big as her eye. It would have to do. If she had just once piece of glass instead of a broken mirror, it should be easier. 

She gripped it hard and a corner bit into her thumb. Well. Adding blood to the spell wouldn’t hurt. Should help establish contact too. 

She spun threads of magic around and into the red streaked glass. 

And there was the command tent she had talked to just a little bit ago. 

“There! Yes! Contact! Hey if you can hear this, get someone who can handle an emergency. This is Page Gwyn. We’ve got wounded and are stuck down in a cave.”

She heard something, a distant voice that sounded surprised. She gripped the glass harder and poured another level of enchantment into the glass. 

“This is page Gwyn, we are down in a cave and have wounded. Do you hear me? Our fucking mirror fucking broke.”

A voice boomed huge and loud. It filled the cave and caused debris to fall down in a miniature rock fall,

“Page we hear you. We hear you very well. Very loudly. Everyone in the area hears. How far did you go before this cave? What are the injuries?”

The noise bounced around the cave, and then came back in an echo through the mirror again. Then it happened again till the message was overlapping to unintellableness. 

Gwyn clapped her other hand over the glass, trying to muffle the endless noise. 

Ulrik and Justin were crouched over Ivan to protect the unconscious page and had hands clapped over their hands.  
Gwyn shrugged and grimaced sheepishly at them. “Sorry” she mouthed. The noise was still going and going. 

/ok maybe blood was a bad idea. Maybe Justin should have done after all. But we are communicating dammit/

Eventually, it died down.  
Gwyn tried talking again, “We were heading south east along rock formation called Giant’s Linen Closet. We were headed to a valley to then head north to camp. Ivan has a concussion but is fine. Rest of us are fine. Justin thinks there’s a good tunnel to get us to the valley. Meet us there. Don’t fall down under the Giant’s Closet, cause even I can’t climb back out. Respond in short sentences will ya? The echo is deafening.”

There was a long pause on the other end this time. 

“Sending help south along Crabapple valley, then north west along the rock formation. Sending a healer. Try water to scry to us next time and not broken glass.”

Gwyn grimaced after the echos died down and she stopped the connection. 

“Rub it in why don’t you. Right. Shall we head out then?”

“I’m doing the next far-speaking spell” Justin declared

“Yes, yes”

“And i’m using water”

“Good, fantastic”

“And you’re not gonna say anything about me having a more useful gift that would be wasted doing that sort of thing. Nore complaining about water.”

“I said yes. And I said sorry. But we talked to them. They know and they are coming to help. I’m sorry the loud noise upset you” Gwyn said with as much sincerity as she could muster past her embarrassment.

Justin and Ulrik sorted out the extra supplies into their own packs while Gwyn pulled Ivan into a over the shoulder carry. His legs draped over one shoulder, his shoulders over the other. His breathing seemed ok, so she clasped an arm around one of his knees and then held onto one of his arms to keep him from slipping too much. 

Justin and his witch lights went first. The traveling was fairly easy over the gravel. Behind her Gwyn heard Ulrik counting paces under his breath. 

The tunnel Justin hand mentioned was wide, but short. Justin had to stoop, and Gwyn needed to re-arrange Ivan on her shoulders. But at least she didn’t have to worry about bonking his head on the side of the tunnel. The tunnel forked a few times, but like justin had mentioned, there was a faint light coming from a long way off. They simply chose paths that had more light at the end each time.  
Gwyn wanted to pass the time by complaining or cracking jokes or /something/. Hearing gravel crunch under foot was boring. 

“I don’t think that light is getting any closer” 

“Mm.” justin didn’t seem to be listening.

“And isn’t that weird? Cause we’ve been walking. Either it should shrink or grow or something if it was natural.”

“Mm.” 

“So it’s probably unnatural.”

“Mm.” 

/Dammit now this conversation is boring/ Gwyn fumed to herself

They turned a corner, and to her annoyance, the light got brighter.  
Justin looked back over his shoulder to check on the two of them and Gwyn could swear he was being smug about it.

The tunnel had gotten wider at the turning too, but no taller.  
/surely that’s weird too/ Gwyn felt jittery with all her excess worry and nothing to do about it, /not that i’ve been in a bunch of caves, but this feels weird/

She tried sending out her magic to get a sense for the rocks and stone around them. Without having to look for one particular mineral, she could just push out with her gift and get a feel for the bigger parts of the formation.

“Holy shit, guys. This is like a fucking ant hill. There are tunnels like this all through the strata. Up ahead there’s a vertical shaft where we could go up or down if we wanted to, and these tunnels are all the same height.”

“Mm.. wait what?” Justin looked over his shoulder at her.

“They’re artificial. I’m certain. I have no idea what made them, or how they formed. But rock doesn’t just decide not to be packed in on itself like this.”

Justin tried to straighten up as he considered, then rubbed his scalp where the ceiling bonked him.

“So… people live here?”

“I don’t fucking know. I can just see where the rock is, and then where it isn’t by extention. Squishy organic matter isn’t something I’m good at.”

Ulrik piped up from behind her, “could you figure out a way out then? If you can see the tunnels, you can tell which ones will lead out, couldn’t you?”

“Uh,” this kid and his maps, Gwyn turned around to look at him, “maybe? It might take a while. It would be easier if we stopped so I could focus better. So honestly, i don’t mind just keeping going toward the light and coming back later.”

“Speaking of the light…” justin hazarded, “you know how you mentioned it seemed weird and unnatural, Gwyn?”

“Yeah man, I was trying to get you to say something besides that annoying ass ‘hmm’ noise”

“Do you always have to curse like that? It’s so annoying. But look, down the way we came. There’s light down that way too.”

Gwyn focused from looking at the other pages and down the tunnel. Sure enough, that soft glow was shining from the far end of the tunnel on both directions. 

“Uhhhh… Weird..” Gwyn philosophised.

“Try snuffing your lights Justin” Ulrik suggested, “let’s see what happens”

Justin pulled a face like he wasn’t sure that was a good idea. But shrugged. “Can’t be more dangerous than slipping and making us all fall down here.”

The lights flicked out and Gwyn blinked to adjust. Her night vision enchantment did pretty well with dim light, but didn’t help with fast changes like this. 

Her ability to see eased back in as she adapted, but then the hallway kept getting brighter. It was a strange sensation, and she lifted up her glasses to rub at her eyes. /maybe i over exerted the limits of the enchantment?/

Justin and Ulrik were making astonished noises, 

“Mithros and the Goddess, that’s beautiful” Justin breathed. Gwyn stopped rubbing at her eyes and had to agree. Soft light was glowing from between the thin sheets of rock all along the hallway. It also spread along the ceiling like veins or roots in a loose network, and even faintly through the gravel. After a long minute, it was almost as bright as Justin’s witchlights had been, but gave a better view of the tunnels as they stretched away from them.

“So… magical light that doesn’t like magical light? How does that work? Numair would love this.” Gwyn stirred some of the gravel below foot. The level of light didn’t change as she moved the rocks around.

“I’m not sure it is magical…” justin reached out and touched a glowing vein by his head. It smudged like a line of chalk, and some came off on his finger. His glowing fingertip quickly faded and stopped glowing. 

“Sure. sure. The glowing rocks aren’t magical. I believe you. Just quick, quick question. How hard did you hit your head?” Gwyn reached over like she was going to test his forhead for a fever. 

“I don’t think it’s the rocks, Gwyn. There’s some plants that glow on their own. Like lightning bugs do. It could be something like that. Not just magic causing it.”

“I read about that.” Ulrik agreed, “There’s a fascinating paper about fish in the deep parts of the ocean that glow. Merpeople have lots of stories about them”

Gwyn shuddered. “Right ok i get the point. We don’t need to have you spending energy on light now, Justin. Let’s keep going.”

They passed one of the vertical shafts she had sense before, and she pointed it out to the lads. Soon after was a fork and they again took the turn that had the strongest glow. 

Justin kept messing with the glowing lines, and kept saying he wished for some sample jars. He seemed very energized about this development, and talking about how it responded to stimuli like warmth and light.

“Research later, man. Ivan’s not getting any lighter” Gwyn teased. Honestly once she had gotten used to the weight, and how to walk with her knee in a cast, she thought she could keep going for hours more. 

Taking the brighter fork at each opportunity meant the tunnels got bigger, since there was more space for the glow to come from. Eventually they learned by scraping at the bright stuff that it was dusty but clingy, like a m old. The glow didn’t last long on skin or on clothing, but wore on for a while on metal or stones. Touching it would make a dim spot that dind’t recover though. 

Ulrik was excitedly chattering about how happy the biology teacher back at the palace will be when Gwyn ran into Justin. He had turned a corner, then suddenly ducked back to step on Gwyn’s foot. Before she could swear in surprise, Justin hissed, 

“Monster, coming this way on all fours. Looks like a tauros.” he looked anxiously over at Gwyn. She scowled and slowly eased Ivan to the ground up against the glowing wall.

“We can handle a Tauros. It will go after me, you two can go around it to flank. Easy. Just get along the walls and don't step on Ivan.”  
Gwyn could feel her blood fizzing and getting excited. She had just started to get bored after all the stress of falling into this place. Something to do, something to fight was a welcome distraction from being lost.

The other pages didn’t have much to object to with this plan. Tauros were immortals categorized as monsters since they only cared about having sex. The Tauros would go after human women, and they weren’t very bright. They wouldn’t listen to reason or obey laws. They’d rape, and kill people who got in the way that tried to stop them. Gwyn might have a penis, but she also had breasts and enough of a womb and vagina to give her a menstrual cycle. She wasn’t going to assume the Tauros would be up to discussing what qualifies for being a woman or not regardless. And if it somehow decided she wasn’t a woman, well. That was enough reason to fight it.

She backed down back the way they had come and loosened up her muscles as best she could. A spear or pike, or better yet a bow, would be best against the big immortal, but all the weapons that had survived the fall were were hunting knives and hatchets. Gwyn enjoyed the fizz of anticipation when she heard the monster breathing and crunching. Any remaining aches and pains diminished, even her excitement faded till she felt only calm and ready. 

/this/ she decided, /is what living is all about. Knowing what is threatening you and being ready for it to try to hurt you. And knowing that other people will help you keep it from doing anything bad./

Wicked, needle sharp horns came into view and then the rest of the tauros’s front. Tauros usually reached seven or eight feet tall, so to fit in the low tunnels this one had gone to all fours and walked on his knuckles of his fists. He spotted the pages and bellowed a challenge. When he spotted Gwyn, the bellow changed and became more yearning. He tried to stand, and his horns scraped the ceiling. The Tauros fell back onto his knuckles and rushed toward her. 

Gwyn skipped back a few more paces. She wanted to give Justin and Ulrik more space to get into position. There was a fork a short ways back. She could use that to good effect. The key was to make sure the Tauros had too much forward momentum to change directions as fast as she could.

Son of a bitch that thing is /fast/. The tunnel filled with scraping and scattering gravel along with the snorting bellow of the tauros. 

Gwyn realized she wouldn’t make it to the fork before he caught up with her. So she settled into a crouch, knife out. 

The monster shrieked in pain and swung his horns around to look behind him at the page that had wounded him. Ulrik ripped his hatchet from the tauros’s hip, then Justin’s knife stabbed down on the opposite side into the kidney. If they could keep him moving and not get hurt themselves, those two hits would bleed him to death. Another bellow and the tauros charged towards Gwyn again. She readied her knife to be out of the way when she went to dodge and roll from his charge. Time elongated in anticipation enough that Gwyn realized the running gait of the Tauros on all fours was not like a horse, but much more like an alligator. This made his head and those dangerous horns swing back and forth too fast to follow. She could still feel the right time to move and took it. Her sideways roll and follow up stab up into the armpit of the monster could have been choreographed and practiced for hours. 

She was surprised into yelling then when several spears thudded into the face and along the upper back of the tauros. He sagged to the floor, sliding forward a pace or two after he hit and bubbled a last scream. 

Gwyn turned in amazement to Justin and Ulrik, but they were staring past her, where the spears had come from. She gathered her wits enough to look that way too. 

 

A short distance away were about twenty short figures. Gwyn thought they were children, then thought they were hunting dogs, then shook her head and blew out a breath. The figures were no higher than her breast bone, and were covered in fur a burnt orange color. THey had bright, reflective gold eyes and short, pointed muzzles like hunting dogs. Also like dogs, they had pointed ears that stuck straight up from either side of their wide heads. Half of them held their spears with three fingered hands that ended with long silver talons. Their feet had the same taloned look. Most of them wore something like an apron, the rest wore loincloths, but all of those garments were cloth and decorated with dye and beads. 

One of them raised a spear above their head in triumph and grinned. The mouth opened to show an expanse of silver fangs and spoke very understandable Scanran, 

“Victory! The last of them is fallen!”

Gwyn sat down and looked at the other pages,  
“What are the odds that I’m just dreaming all of this and we’re all still buried in that rockslide?”

\----------------------------------------------

Some of the small creatures retrieved their spears, and the rest fixed their spears to point at the pages. One with scars maring his fur demanded in scanran, 

“Put down your weapons and surrender, intruders. You are not welcome here even if you also hunt our enemy.”

Justin dropped his knife and held his hands out to the side non-threateningly. He answered in Scanran, 

“We deliver, uh, i mean, we sur-surrender.” then asked Ulrik and Gwyn in Common Eastern, “how are you two at scanran, You speak it?”

“Da, ya govoryu eto” confirmed Ulrik, sounding like a native.

“Moye Yamani luchshe” Gwyn hazarded a guess at the conjugation. She could understand Scanran much better than speaking it. If only these were Yamani speaking immortals. 

Quickly, Justin negotiated to make sure that Ivan and Gwyn were healed up in return for the food and weapons the pages had had on them. They learned these immortals called themselves Kobolds. More lived in other sections of the caves here, and this was just a hunting party for the last of three tauroses that had been hunting in the area. 

An hour later, Gwyn’s minor injuries had been seen to, and one of the Kobolds had fed a tea to Ivan to help heal his head injury. The tea had smelled like paint fumes, but Ivan’s color had improved soon after, then woke up. Ivan was listening to Justin explain all that had happened. Ulrik was still talking to the immortals. He was the one that had found out the most about their surprise rescuers. And also that they were looking for their ancient homelands. They had ended up in this tunnel complex by accident, funnily enough. 

 

Finally Ulrik had negotiated a deal. He looked flushed with accomplishment and excitement. She couldn’t remember seeing him look like this at all during the previous year. Then again, he had been one of the younger ducklings. Maybe she just hadn’t paid good attention. This diplomacy stuff and even exploring the cave had been something he had taken to like, well, like a duck to water.  
The deal he had made with them involved trading a map to their old territory up in the scanran mountains. In return, they would show them out of the cave system, give a sample of the glowing mold they had found here.

Gwyn found this all fascinating. But also found herself nodding off to sleep. She wanted to stay awake and learn all about these unheard of immortals. It just seemed like her body had different plans. 

Gwyn woke up to a sharp claw tapping her shoulder, she cracked an eyelid and saw a kobold in one of their apron/smock garments decorated with circles of beads upon a chaotic dyed background.  
Gwyn reached up to rub her sandy eyes underneath the lenses of her glasses that were still hooked on. 

“Stop that, would you? Ugh, I could murder you for coffee.” Gwyn said in scanran

“Coffee is your god?” they asked, 

Gwyn snorted in amusement, “sure, might as well be.”

“Our god shaped us from tears of lonliness. We bring our god comfort by our presence.”

Gwyn grimaced, it was way too early? Late? For this kind of talk. /uhh… how can i explain to someone that i barely care about my own race’s theology, let alone some other race’s/

“That’s… nice?”

The kobold smiled, and the smile spead far wider than the muzzle would suggest. Gwyn thought the whole top of the kobold’s head would lift off if they smiled any further,

“Yes. your god, ‘cough-y’? Does she”

Gwyn cut in, “i’m not the best to talk about” shit what is the word for theology in Scanran, “, uh, not the one to talk about gods with”

“But your god, She has marked” the word took Gwyn a second to translate. Demanded or called for was more literal, “marked you? Like i have been marked by our god, the Lonely One.”

Gwyn’s discomfort ratched up, and she grimaced,

“Look i..” she tried again in Scanran, “The god that marked me. She stole from me. I’m no uh, tool. Not a servant. “ Gwyn corrected. Damn she needed to practice her Scanran real bad.

The kobalt’s bright golden eyes looked sympathetic. Or maybe confusion. The doglike face was hard to read. 

“The Lonely One marked me when the One saved my life. Isn’t that what marked you? Are human gods so different? Isn’t that why you would kill for your god?”

“I never asked to be saved.” Gwyn snapped. /well, that i can remember./

“There is strength in being marked.” the kobalt lifted their hand and rested it reassuringly on Gwyn’s shoulder. “I apologize for” they finished with something Gwyn didn’t understand, then seemed to clarify, “sorry to talk of bad things. Cough-y will surely help you, even if you don’t like it. Help is hard to find. Take what you can get.”

“Um… thank you. For the advise.” Gwyn tried to keep her discomfort from her face and just focused on being polite. “And coffee, that isn’t a god. It is a drink that I like. Graveyard Hag,” Gwyn didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to say that in Scanran, so just said the title in Eastern. “ is the goddess i’m having issues with.” 

The kobalt mouthed the name graveyard hag for a second then closed their eyes. The hair on the back of Gwyn’s neck stood up as something seemed to happen in the air around the small orange figure. They opened their eyes up again and gripped Gwyn’s shoulder tighter,

“Lonely One knows that one. Bezrassudstvo. She is harsh, yes. She also brings much. I understand your unhappiness now.” With a last squeeze they withdrew their talons

Gwyn tried to remember the translation for Bezrassudstvo. It was something like need, oh right, desperation. That word did mean desperation, but also madness, or frenzy, and was pretty interchangeable with another word that meant recklessness and being overwhelming. It wasn’t the adjective that Gwyn would give to describe the Graveyard Hag. She would have used something like Disgust. But there had been something weird when the kobold closed their eyes. So maybe there was something to consider there. 

The kobold continued,  
“your friends are getting ready to follow us out to the outside. May Waterdrop join?”

“Uh… are you Waterdrop?” Gwyn felt rude, but then again, she hadn’t started the theological discussion.

“Yes! It is nice to meet you.”

“Um, yes. Nice to meet you also” Gwyn parroted. “I’m Gwyn. You can join us.”

“Thank you Gvin.”

\-----------------------

“I just had the strangest goddamned conversation with the one with a bunch of colors on the smock, Waterdrop.”

“The priest?” Justin confirmed, “yeah i would guess their holy people are strange to talk to. What sort of conversation?”

“Wait, wait, how do you know that they are a priest?”

“The smock. It’s got all those colors.” he looked at her like she was messing with him, “they explained all this”

“Man you know my scanran isn’t very good. I only remember which ones are the leaders. When did they talk about the priests?”

“After the blacksmiths and bakers. They seem more reverent to those occupations than they do toward priests, actually.”

“A logical point of view. The other two actually make important things. Ok, so, yes, priest in the colorful smock. I had a weird conversation. But now that I know they’re a priest, that makes much more sense. But actually,” Gwyn interrupted herself, “what i wanted to ask is when we are getting out of here. Ivan, You’re doing ok, aren’t you?”

Ivan nodded, “Yeah whatever was in that mush these little fellas gave me is helping. Everything feels fine.”

Gwyn turned back to Justin, 

“So we can head out? That priest, Waterdrop, wanted to come with. And i certainly don’t mind you overriding my decision on that. But I would like to get back to camp soonest.”

“Weren't you just taking a nap?” Ulrik teased, “you didn’t seem in a hurry then.”

“I was waiting on you guys. I don’t wanna wait anymore now. Surely you all can come back and talk to these people later. Bring some official people back with you. Speaking of official people: they’ve gotta be wondering why we didn’t meet up with them like we said.”

Justin made a calming gesture,  
“Yes ok, we’re leaving soon. And I already talked with people at camp. The Kobolds had a bucket of water they let me use.”

Gwyn felt a wave of relief. At least part of her tension could stop bothering her. She just didn’t want to be stuck in diplomacy-mode for much longer. Gwyn much preferred adventure-mode or research-mode. 

“Good. yes. Let’s go already”

It took another agonizing 15 minutes for the pages, Waterdrop, and a couple other Kobolds to head out. The oldest looking, Whistlerock, dressed in a plain leather apron and was one of the revered masons and blacksmiths. Echoecho was the guide of the group. They were smaller than many of the other kobolds, dressed in a two tone loincloth that hang down past their knees. It had wavey lines going every which way embroidered in beads. They were particularly chatty, and Ulrik and Ivan were happy to chat back in their perfect Scanran.

Gwyn did her best to act as a lookout and to seem too busy to talk to. She didn’t relish the thought of another theological discussion with Waterdrop. She felt like the Kobold was watching her too closely.

After a long week and a half, the pages and their trainers finally headed back to the palace. Tkaa and Daine had been called to the camp area to better work with the uncovered immortals. Gwyn wanted to be curious about them. She wanted to take this opportunity to learn. But she still felt unnerved about Waterdrop’s conversation. It was though she was waiting for something else to happen. 

It’s just that nothing else did happen. It was frustrating, since she had all this pent up anxiety swirling around. Gwyn decided that she could sacrifice her own peace of mind for the safety of other people. No one was as happy as her to get out of the mountains and head back home to the palace. 

\--------------------------------

Gwyn was unpacking things at her townhouse when Corel and Stefain ambushed her

“It’s time to head down south to your estates.” Stefain declared.

“They’ve all been waiting a long time.” Corel nodded

“Wait, but i only just got back from a trip. I have reading to catch up on and training.” 

“Your people have waited a long time to see you after your parents died. I knew you wanted to focus on getting stronger for page training but now that that has started, you should tend to your obligations to your lands and the people there.”

Gwyn ground her teeth. She wanted to whine and protest. /Another trip? Down south? By the Coast! Why couldn’t I just ignore my lands and merely continue to live off the money they generated for me like some sort of greedy parasite without any thought in return? Other nobles did that just fine!  
/But other nobles also weren’t the sole living member of their family. They also hadn’t specifically chosen to claim to be a noble so that they could become a knight./

Gwyn sighed and relaxed in defeat. She did owe a lot toward her people and her estates. If she didn’t like that obligation then she should have decided to be a commoner and let house Haryse be picked over by other nobles. 

“Right. Fine. Fucking… fine. I’m going. I know i’m being petty and stupid about it just.. Let me be childish for two fucking seconds. I’ll start packing again goddamnit.”


	14. In Which the Second Year Starts, and Gwyn becomes a Sponsor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cast: Bastian Haim, first year page. Bexy, Gwyn, Third, Yoshirou, Ahmond, Princess Pumpkin Puffball, Gloaming
> 
> added a bit i found in my notes.

Gwyn and Corel topped a hill and she sighed with relief. After a week of riding back north, there was Corus again. Gwyn slumped over Gloaming's neck 

“Home. Finally” she ignored Corel's snort. They had just come from Gwyn's 'home' Haryse. But nothing there had brought back any of the memories she had lost. It was a nice enough town. Large, built around Fort Haryse. But it was no Corus with people of all types coming to the markets, temple district, and royal palace. This was where the Haryse's town house was, and that's where she considered her true home. It was a home she had made for herself once she was discharged from the hospital. The people there knew her for who she was, not for the forgotten ghost that had drowned along with her parents.  
She needed to shake off this resentment, it was something she had been toting around the whole summer break, but now summer was almost over.

“I'm gonna run for a bit” she announced to her horse and to her retainer. She swung off the saddle in a flash. At least the long summer of traveling down south and then back up had gotten her better at horsemanship.

She stretched and twisted her mouth at the feel of her breeches being too short. She'd run out of extra hem to let down over the trip. She couldn't wait for the fabric bulging out her saddlebags, renowned Haryese dyed fabric, to be made up into a set of clothes that fit perfectly.

She stretched again, focusing on the discomfort, burning the negative emotion for fuel in the crucible of her mind, and tore down the hill in a sprint. For a few lovely minutes it felt flying, effortless, along the dry and dusty road, then her body registered the effort and started protesting the sudden change from riding to running. She grinned and burned the protesting in her inner crucible, breathing deep and fast to keep tempo with her legs.

At the bottom of the hill she was delighted with the speed, her legs seemed like they could barely keep up, and her feet weren't so much propelling her forward as keeping her from falling on her face. She kept bent over in her sprinting crouch as the road leveled out till the momentum started to drizzle away. Gwyn straightened up into an upright running form and spotted a wagon up ahead. Her target aquired, she focused on racing towards it. Her feet burned with the heat of the road. The sun clawed down on her head and deep into her shoulders with hot iron, and her legs and lungs felt like acid. Gwyn gave a breathless laugh and grinned, the next exhale was a whoop and she pushed harder, lifting her heels and knees up higher, digging her toes into the ground like she could kick off and fly.

She caught up with the wagon, and leapt up onto the back. Her impact made a thunk that she could hear the horses complain about and the driver yell, “What in the Goddess's name?”

Gwyn clambered up the back of the covered wagon, gripping the thick fabric till she felt the wooden beams that arched over the top. She swished up on top of the last beam and made her way up the wagon in short controlled hops

=============

The driver looked behind herself to see a boy, no, a girl? Someone with short cropped hair close to the scalp, and dusty but finley made clothing come up over the top of her wagon. 

“bandit?” she wondered aloud, reaching for her sickle to defend herself. But the girl, with those hips and chest it was probably a girl, was only armed with a demonic grin and leapt from the top of the wagon down to the dashboard in front of the driver, then to the back of her dappled work horse, and with a somersault, over the top of the gelding's head and continued to run down the road.

The strange runner kept going down the road in a relaxed runners form. As comfortable and arrogant as if she owned the road and all the land around her.

A bit later, the runner was well ahead, that casual seeming pace taking her down the road much faster than the gelding could pull the wagon.

A riderless horse trotted past her, and then a big man on a big horse, almost a drafter like her own, passed as well. 

“Ma'am” he tugged his forelock in greeting, “Sorry about the commotion, my lady is just excited to be back. She didn't damage anything, did she?”

“I thought t’wer a bandit after me pottery! And you caller a lady? Climbin over people's property, she done me a frighten! And clomped over my Kicker, skert him 5 years older, she did!”

“Ah, well, do come by the palace and ask for Heryse when your wares are set up for sale, I'm sure our business will calm old Kicker and yourself back to a cheerful youth. Now, if you'll excuse me, she's getting out of sight”

The big horse drummed up speed, leaving even more dust and the driver confused, but hopeful. Haryse, that was one of the big names in nobility. She was gonna charge them triple.

===================

Gwyn woke up before dawn and went to roll out of bed to tend to the campfire and start breakfast.  
But she wasn't in a forest, field, or her tent. The stone floor of her room in the palace was cold and almost damp from the early humidity. Humidity? Crap, that means riding in the rain.  
/Wait no, cmon, wake up it's the first day back at page training! Fuck yeah!/

Gwyn kipped up, still trying to steer her mind away from her camping routine and go through her castle routine. She worked through some exercises to loosen and then warm up her muscles, then changed into a fresh set of running clothes. They weren't her fancy things she'd brought back from Haryse, but standard palace work clothes. Tying up her boots, she slipped out the window and made for the roof.

An orange fluffy cat seemed to be waiting for her, perched on a gargoyle's head.  
“You're still hanging around, eh? I thought you had gotten bored and made someone else adopt you over the summer.”

A swish of the plumey tail and a stretch were her only answer. The cat kept up with Gwyn as she made her way across the familiar rooftop and went over a small gap, along a garden wall, and climbed up a steep buttress to the roof of the great hall. A decorative spire loomed, begging to be climbed.  
She reached the top, legs clamped and braced against the tower s she looked around. Sure enough, it looked like rain. There was a fog on the river, and the sunrise bruised the sky red and purple.  
Against the brightening sky, she could make out a moving point along the palace wall. It sped along effortlessly. Gwyn waved, assuming that it was her pal Ahmond, but couldn't really make out if the tiny silhouette did anything in return.

She slid down and stretched her complaining leg muscles, then her shoulders and wrists. Princess Puffball followed her winding path across and over the palace architecture and back into Gwyn's rooms.  
Bexy, the blessed angel, had made coffee and had some scones warming on the hearth.

Overcome with optimism, Gwyn hugged her tight. “you are such a better morning companion than Corel, Bexy, you have no idea. I don't know what I did to deserve you”

Bexy laughed and patted her young friend's head that was a good deal taller than last year. The hair had been shorn off almost to the scalp again, and was bristly soft.

“Need to feed the growing girl if she's to be a magnificent knight. Get to it, I'll get yer wash and clothes ready.”

Gwyn chomped half a scone away and gulped some water to wash it down. Then reverently, held up the small gold rimmed coffee cup and took a sip.  
Hot. Rich. Spicy. Sweet. The drink seemed to roar through her bloodstream.  
“Gods and stars I need to buy into the trade of this. It's so fucking good.”

\-------------------

In the palace corridors, Gwyn had been too busy catching up with third and ahmond about their summers to really pay attention to the new pages and who was sponsoring them. Ahmond had gone south like she had, but further east into the desert. Third had books of juicy gossip from the palace, and some news of unrest in Maren. So it surprised her when sir haMinch had to ask again if someone would be willing to sponsor this first year page. She heard some other page mutter "They shouldn't let merchants be knights. Sponsoring him would be a waste of time" and instead of any censure, other pages laughed quietly.

 

Her voice echoed back to Gwyn from down the hallway as she declared,  
"Don't mind these losers, they're afraid someone might talk about how much debt their families are in. I, Gwydian of Haryse, would be honored if you would accept my sponsorship." 

Sir haMinch leveled his ice blue gaze on her, "Libel, page haryse. You'll be reporting to extra-"

"My lord, you will first have to prove whom I was talking about and whether or not what I said was actually untrue in order to level an accusation of libel. You know I don't shrink from any punishments, but I would like to earn the punishments honestly, through hard work, rather than because of someone's supposed offense."

"Having her as a sponsor won't do you any favors, Bastian Haim, but I'm afraid you may be stuck with her" haMinch looked down to his side

Gwyn couldn't see who he was talking to through the crowd, so started to elbow her way through the crowd. At 14, she was of age with the oldest pages, so it was easy work.

The boy under sir haMinch's gaze was a straw, tall and thin. He was holding a notebook to his chest rather defensivly, but his chin was raised and his shoulders were squared. 

"I didn't hear you, page Haim" haMinch added cooley.

"Yes. Sir." The voice was thin too.

"Very well. This" He gestured to Gwyn who was closing the small gap, "is page Gwydian of Haryse. As your sponsor she will show you around the castle and answer any questions you have about a pages duties. You will follow her instructions." 

Gwyn stepped up to offer her hand. Though the Bastian boy was probably 10 like most first year pages, he was only a head shorter than herself. It accented his straw like appearance. 

"Gwyn, at your service" She announced

He awkwardly unwrapped an arm from around his notebook, and gingerly took her hand "Bastian."  
She slung an arm across his shoulders, so squared they were pointy,  
"let's get you some meat on your bones."

Wary eyes beneath serious brows looked at her and quickly looked away. A tight nod followed.

Breakfast was just like last year, with Sir haMinch explaining the rules in his best no nonsense voice. Gwyn was delighted to hear that Sir Kel was staying on as a training master assistant. Numair wasn't going to be a co-instructor this year, so hopefully she could do her magic her own way and not have to stretch so hard. Gwyn felt a little guilty at that lazy thought. Shouldn’t she want to do magic correctly? She loved working hard at everything else, just not magic the way it was taught at the palace.

Breakfast with Bastian was quiet. He seemed to be intent on soaking up the atmosphere, so Gwyn gave him some space and focused on her coffee.

All of her old ducklings came by to say hi. Leo had gotten scorched by the sun so bad he was still peeling. The new squires had tales of their first summers with knight masters. After the first introduction, Bastian seemed much more relaxed when he realized no one was paying attention to him. As the meal was breaking up, he tore off a page on his notepad and handed it to Yoshiro. It was a quick sketch of the story he had been telling, up in the mountains by a stream, talking to a tree with a face. Yoshiro had called it a kami, a sort of immortal.

Bastian started looking more and more uncomfortable as people complimented him and asked him about his experience drawing, and if they could see other things he had drawn. Third wanted very much his own sketch.

Gwyn stepped in when Bastian went from politely surprised at the attention to panicked and overwhelmed.

“right you lot of louts, shove off, I still have to show him around, and you all are getting in the way.”

Third snorted “good to see you haven't changed that much besides getting bigger and tanner”

“shoo ducklings”

Bastian looked surprised when everyone actually shooed. Yoshiro went away last, offering a final bow to Bastian.  
“Alright Bastian, let's get you kitted up from the infirmary, hit the stables and a tour of the page's practice area. After lunch we'll focus on the interior of the castle, make sure you know most of the quick routes to important places.”

They were given the rest of the day to prepare, so Gwyn made sure Bastian got a medical kit, and knew where to get more notebooks, writing materials, and uniforms, where the good places to study were, and how to get out of his rooms without going by a guard post. He had seemed very surprised by the last, but she feigned nonchalance and made it seem perfectly natural, so Bastian didn't say anything. He didn't have his own serving person, so she made sure he knew which cooks took pity on hungry pages, and which not to get demanding with. 

Next they did a tour of the practice fields and stables.  
Next they did a tour of the practice fields and stables.

"You know how to ride, Bastian?"

"Hm?" his lashes squeezed together and he refocused on her

"Ride? horses?"

"Oh, yes, of course."

"Great. i had no idea myself when i started. i've only been in the city since i can remember, and horses just seem to get in the way on crowded streets. but i'll show you the stables anyway. Toby's usually there, he's got some Gift with horses, so he's nice to get on your good side."

“I’ve heard good things about the palace bloodlines. I was able to bring my mare, Blizzard, here.” he seemed to have some eagerness threaded through his tense, wire frame. Gwyn reminded herself to introduce him to Phillip. They both seemed to have a love for horses. 

Gloaming dribbled slobber on his shirt after Gwyn introduced them.  
"I promise that means she likes you, she'd have bitten if she thought you were rotten."

"It's no trouble"  
The notebook he had carried faithfully through the day separated from his chest and was flipped open. then a thin pencil appeared out of nowhere. /Did he have one up his sleeve all the time? /  
She tried to catch his eye with an unspoken question, but she wasn't quite sure she registered right now. He only had eyes for his notebook and Gloaming.

Gloaming, of course, was enjoying the attention and had arched her neck quite prettily and danced in her stall. 

Gwyn let them be and pulled out her own personal fascination. She had been working on an enchantment that would get rid of insects in the area. From her pocket she took out the small toad made of beaded bits of jasper, agate, and river stone. She checked how it had weathered the long day in her pocket, looking for breaks or cracks, but it seemed sound enough. 

She traced a pattern on the smooth stones on its belly, then set it down. it hopped forward and mouthed a bit of hay, then leapt up and neatly caught a horse fly. Small ticking noises and buzzing came from the toad as the fly tried to find a way out, and the toad went off to find more prey.

It was programmed to go in a slow circle around the campfire she and Corel always set up while they were traveling, and Gwyn was curious to see how it would handle the stalls in its path.   
She was sitting on a small stool with the de-animated toad in her lap, looking over the lines of magic in the legs when she heard a quiet, polite cough.

Bastian was studying her, with that same tense air he had all the time. 

"Hey, so, you done sketching?"

Sudden jerk of the chin after a small pause. 

"Cool, could i see the one you did of Gloaming sometime? she seemed to like being an art study."

He glanced around as though unsure, then tilted his head to nod slightly. 

"Alright. no rush."

Gwyn unfolded from the chair and went to tuck the toad back in her pocket

"What is that?"

Gwyn grinned, she had earned a question from him! 

"It's an enchanted statue: a toad to catch bugs in a local area. i spent the summer on the road, and got sick of the bugs. so i figured i'd try to make something to get rid of them"

"Interesting"

"Thanks! the end goal is to make ones that don't need someone with the gift to activate them. so anyone could use them. but that's probably still a few years off."

"So anyone could do magic? That’s lucrative."

Gwyn stretched with happiness, this is a conversation! she wasn't sure if he was just nervous about being here or if it was something else, but he hadn't talked this much all day.

"That's the goal. I developed a night vision charm that anyone can use, and got to perfect it with practice last year."

he seemed to consider and digest this

"I could show you that night vision charm later this week,” Gwyn offered, “I haven't made any for a while"

“Well uh, I uh, know axes. And bows. Some stuff, but mostly bows and crossbows. If the bandits got close enough to set things on fire, we had pretty much already lost.” he answered to her question of weapons experience. Gwyn grinned. 

“Good, good, cause I probably couldn't help you with bow work. But melee fighting I know pretty well. I've been trying to practice archery as much as I can, but I'm still awful”

Lunch, and touring the castle, sharing anecdotes and hearing small morsels about Bastian's huge family of merchants passed the rest of the day quickly. What he lacked in grace and charm he made up for in a military bearing and a quick wit, and an incredibly sharp mind. She wasn't sure if he was ever going to stop talking to the librarian about the collection at the palace. Even the librarian seemed impressed by how well read he was.

“I go for runs in the morning before the bell to wake up is called. If you want to join, let me know. Ahmond is also great to run with. He goes along the Curtain Wall every morning. I'm a bit harder to find since I run around at random."

His sharp duck of the head of a nod in acknowledgement, and then it was time for bed

Bexy had rearranged the rooms again. There was a lovely lush bed-prison in the second chamber for her, and a comfy, supportive camping mat for Gwyn in the front room. They caught up with their respective stories about summer over kitting and jewelry making.


	15. In Which there is a Lake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cast: unnamed knight, Sir haMinch, Third, Bastian, Gwyn
> 
> hydrophobia, panic attack

Bexy woke Gwyn up with coffee, and then the room was filled with the warm toasted smell of coffee and the sound of long lists of Bexy's virtues and genius.

Gwyn was so excited to start the new year of training she felt like her bones would vibrate even if she could manage to stop fidgeting. 

Running along the top of the Wall seemed too easy and smooth, so she ran laps from the pages wing out around the training yard and then back to blow off steam. 

Breakfast was a happy haze of boasting with friends and itching to get outside again. Bastian seemed out of place without his notebook, and his breakfast was just pushed around on the plate. Gwyn piled some scrambled eggs and bacon onto a piece of toast and set it on his plate.

"If you can't get yourself to eat, try doing it all at once. You need bread or rice so you're not weak with hunger before lunch, and eggs or meat or that tofu stuff to keep your strength up. Eat both at once and you cut down on the time you have to chew and be too nervous to eat. Oh, and have some juice." She advised with a silly grin

He looked pained and put upon, but took a bite and then another, and the sandwich was gone when she checked back on him later. She was too excited to really mess about making sure he ate properly, she could do that later. 

Finally breakfast ended and they filed out to the courtyard. The sequence of training lessons was different, since she was an advanced page now. She happily threw herself into everything. Even archery was vastly improved. She wouldn't call herself accurate at all. But she did hit the target more than she missed. And sometimes it was even close to the center. 

For once, she wasn't the last one done grooming and saddling the horse. she moved on automatic, only bothering to double check the finer details, and trusting that Gloaming would let her know if she forgot or missed a step. the long weeks traveling down to Haryse and back had certainly paid off. 

later, she wished that the morning hadn't been so wonderful. That it had been raining, perhaps, or she had gotten into trouble with an instructor. Something to keep her own issues from ruining the wonderful start of the new year. 

Instead, Sir HaMinch announced after horsemanship training,  
"For the past few years, this has been the last class of the morning. That changes this year. In the summer for the page's traveling at the end of the year, we will be going to Port Caymln to learn and aide in naval combat. Therefor, the last training session each day will be swimming and later, basic boat handling. Leave your weapons and anything that isn't waterproof here in your mount's stable. The hands will get it back to your rooms before lunch. I expect you all lined up by the lake in five minutes"

It took Third nudging her to get Gwyn moving. She removed her belt knife and sword belt dazedly. 

/why, why, why this year, why when she was here, why the fucking navy, why./

What could she do to get out of this? Surely sir haminch knew she was afraid of water. He had found out last year, right? Maybe he didn't know. Maybe she wouldn't have to. Maybe she could do something else. Like shove pins under her fingernails. Or scrub privies. Third kept prodding her, so she walked. She felt like she was in a bad dream. 

They got to the lake, even the smell was awful and cloying down her throat to drown her. Her eyes bored into the side of Sir HaMinch's head until he turned his head to look at her. She didn't see any way out in that look. She had talked too much about training and keeping command of people last year with him. Gwyn could practically hear him calmly explaining that her hero, Sir Kel, had faced her fear of heights, and because she had faced it had been able to save lives. Then go on to explain that Sir Allana had faced her fear of cold to obtain the Dominion Jewel. Gwyn didn’t find the triumphs of her heros much help right now. 

At the shore of the palace grounds lake, which stretched wide. The trees of the royal forest on the opposite shore were an indistinct layer of green. The lake also had been connected to the city reservoir. 

Gwyn blinked her eyes harshly when she realized her eyes were wide and staring from her fear of this cold wet blob of landscape. 

Sir Haminch must have said something, because the others had started removing their shoes and grouping up. Third nudged her again, she heard his voice from a long way off say something about her glasses. Then she got nudged again, harder, in the ribs.   
"I'm fine. glasses are fine. It's fine. I'm fine. I'm Fine. Fine. I Am Fine." 

She assured him. Gwyn was fairly sure she wasn't shouting, but Third sill seemed pretty alarmed. or maybe worried.  
He squeezed her shoulder and nodded heavily "Ok. you're fine. i got it. you got this."

Taking off her boots was a relief, cause at least it gave her something solid to do besides wait. the pages were divided up based on swimming experience. gwyn was one of 4 who didn't have any experience with it at all. The rest went with Sir Haminch to the pier for review of swimming strokes. Gwyn was relieved when Ahmond was in the smallest group with her. Two other first years she hadn’t met yet were also in the group of no swimming experience. 

The instructor of the small group was a knight that was often at court. Gwyn was sure she had seen him before, but couldn't get her mind to make any connections. He was tall, and solid like a warhorse. His black hair was done in long braids, which framed a hard face with a strong jaw with a neat braided beard. His skin was a cool toned dark brown. Carthaki maybe. She still couldn’t place him with so much of her distracted by the lake. 

Gwyn couldn't seem to keep his voice in her head long enough for what he was saying to become phrases or sentences. She could hear the words, but once each word was finished, it vanished from her head. As invisible as the breath the knight was using to speak. 

Someone nudged her and she tried to focus on what the knight had been saying. Nothing came to mind.

"W-What? sir? i didn't... catch..." Her own train of thought was dissolving as she spoke. she squeezed her eyes shut and tried again

"I failed to pay proper attention, sir. was there something you asked me?"

She opened her eyes to him looking condescending, "Your name. page. And how you've gotten this far in your life without learning to swim before"

defensive anger grabbed onto her voice and pulled the words out, "Gwydian of Haryse" that one was easy, an almost automatic answer now. She opened her mouth to explain losing her parents, her memory, but she didn’t have the breath for it. “Shipwreck.” was as good an explanation she could give. 

The knight grunted and shook his hair. tight braids pendulumed under his chin from the movement. "Well then," and his words started streaming together and evaporating again. He made a gesture toward the lake and the other pages started forward towards it. A beat later, Gwyn swung her leg out and marched forward too. 

The lake looked calm. the wind stirred a pattern of waves. The ground got cold and damp under her feet, the rocks and grass slippery, then just cool and rocky. The knight and pages started wading in, the sounds of the water sloshing over them sounded visceral, gorey. She hadn't been in the temple of the black god to help prepare the dead for a while, but the sounds the water made made her hands twitch in memory of feeling skin part, fluids leak, organs shift. The lake didn't seem to be a landscape anymore. In her bones, Gwyn felt it was an aware thing. It would know if she stepped into it. she would have to puncture it to join the others. Stand not surrounded by the water, but inside that lake creature. and if she did that, she'd be at its mercy. 

Something took a hold of her shoulders, and her view of the lake was blocked by the knight. He was bending over to meet her eyes, but she was distracted by how the braids in his hair interacted with the braids in his beard. Her body was jostled from his grip on her shoulders. His eyes were black without a discernible change from iris to pupil. They seemed solid, stern, and calm. 

"You're afraid." His voice matched his gaze. there wasn't any condescension in it anymore, just solid fact.

Gwyn opened her mouth to answer, but didn't have the breath to answer. She realized her breathing was skittering and uneven, and sought to hold onto it, getting at least that part of herself under control.

"Good" The knight stated again, solid and calm. "It is alright to be afraid." 

Gwyn felt anger and frustration shove at the numb fog that seemed to be filling her up.   
the knight must have seen something in her face change cause he continued, 

"Yes, it is. Knights are often afraid, but we do the job that is in front of us. The job gets done.  
"Right now, your job is to take yourself and your fear into the lake. Your job is also to trust me to keep you safe.  
"Can you do that?" 

Frustration and it's old companion, anger, were making a good deal of progress against the internal fog. she could feel the invigorating heat of anger in her arms and down her legs. Gwyn clenched her jaw and a sharp sting of pain burned away some of the fog in her mind. She freed her bitten lip and nodded.

"Good." the knight stood back up and let go of her shoulders

"Go join the others, I’'m right behind you."

the others were up to their chests and as she watched they would pinch their own nose, and crouch under water and then stand back up after a time.Ahmond was soaked. He had obviously been doing this while the knight was talking to Gwyn, but she still gasped and stumbled forward when he went under while she was watching. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t. Please no.

Water splashed up over her ankle, and then over her other second ankle too. Horror and its numbing fog washed over her again. Gwyn shuddered and sloshed to a stop. Her pose was awkward and off balance. But moving meant more sloshing, so she locked her muscles in place. Ahmond appeared, safe and alive. He innocently bobbed back up out of the water and was smiling. He waved at her in encouragement. Said something she didn't comprehend. 

Gwyn stared down at her bare feet, she wasn't sure if she would feel more disgusted if she was standing ankle deep in blood. The lake water was greasy. The rocks were fuzzy with moss that squished under her toes. 

/Do the job that is in front of you/  
/Do the job that is in front of you/  
/Move, move, do something/

Sweat felt heavy and slimy on her forhead and shoulders, down her back and under her breasts.

/Don't think about it, just do it/

Gwyn forced herself to raise a knee. her foot coming out of the water was fairly easy. She pulled the knee up high. She couldn't get it to go back down. She felt like screaming.

"Dammit, damn you, fucking lake, fucking water, goddammit" a stream of obscenity and vile steamed out under her breath.

Inspired by the old friend of hatred, she kicked down, grinding her heel into the shallow lake bed. the splash was awful. her legs were both heavy with the stinking mucky water. With the disgusted adrenalin of smashing a bug in your bedroom, she kicked forward two more steps. the water sucked and squelched at her pants just above the calf.   
Something.   
Some. Thing. Had slithered a tongue over the top of her foot. 

Gwyn swiped a numb hand over a slick forehead and held her shoulders. What was she doing? Why was she doing this? Why was she here? Why were are all these people here making noise and laughing when they are all obviously in danger. 

She wanted to get to shore, but couldn't figure out which of the swirling directions was shoreward. the light reflecting from the surface of the treacherous water was too bright, too flashing. the human forms too indistinct, and whatever was licking her foot had grown a second tongue. She wished it would just pull her down, force her to move. She was pretty sure she could fight off anything once she got moving; once a foe actually acted against her. More sweat dripped down her face and back. She could taste the salt of it and the salt of the sea.

For a long, perfect moment, she couldn't feel the water, or see any reflections. She felt neither hot nor cold. everything was weightless, numb, and grey. concerns and fear dribbled away. The grey space was too full yet too empty to house emotions. She felt herself blink, but it also felt like she was using her fingers to make someone elses eyelids blink. The automatic movement felt foreign, and too exaggerated. 

She floated in that moment, almost content, very detached. People and things moved around her. Sometimes they seemed to go very fast, and sometimes they seemed to go in slow motion. A large, dark brown figure waded toward her. She wasn't sure if he would stop, or if perhaps he would move right through her as if she wasn't really there.

He got close enough that she could count the braids in his beard, and how many plaits each braid was made up of. Well, she could remember the act of counting. but the final result fizzled away from the empty/fullness she was made up of.

A heavy weight from his outstretched hands pressed on both her shoulders. It shifted and rocked the numbness she felt. his face moved, and with a slight delay she realized he was asking her 'are you alright?’

Of all the ridiculous things to ask. When Gwen went to reply, laughter and giggles slithered out of her mouth instead. She sucked in a breath to laugh some more, and then finally, Finally, the world went black


	16. In Which Gwyn Gets Loud

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwyn, Duke Gareth, Sir haMinch, Bastian, some hospital orderlies

Gwyn thrashed awake. Something, the water and the weeds, clung to her, keeping her down, and the mud below her was too pliant, it oozed beneath her feet, elbows, hips and shoulders but wouldn’t let her get any leverage. She screamed in frustration, and suddenly the mud was gone and she hit a hard stone floor with the water and weeds still tangling her. The blanket and sheets tangling her.   
“Fucking fuck who the fuck put me in a fucking bed with some damn blankets what the fuck do you fucking ass” swearing assured her she wasn’t drowning, and she squirmed free of the wretched covers. 

From how brightly white and the smell, she was in the hospital. And her clothes had been replaced with sharply crisp smelling hospital gown. The back was open and untied still. She tied it, adding to her litany of curses the hurt from her elbow and hip from falling out of the cursed bed. That bed was joined in the small cubby by a small table, and the cubby was curtained off by a sheet that smelled the same as her robe. The walls were whitewashed stone though. Not the hospital at Port Caynne then, but the palace’s hospital wing.

She shucked the sheet aside and stalked down the wide corridor that connected all the cubbies in this area. Perfect, there was a hospital worker,   
“Excuse me,” the opening call had as much acid in it as she could put into a polite phrase, “where are my clothes, and how long have I been here?”   
The worker turned around, and warped into High Duke Gareth, the short figure she thought she was calling to become his tall and wide frame much further down the hall. And the crisp hospital clothes focused into pale gold and fawn brown court clothes. Gwyn stopped and shook her head, scrubbing at her eyes in confusion. Of course, she didn’t have her bloody glasses. 

Someone was suddenly holding onto her elbow and Gwyn jerked away from the touch,   
“Do not, do NOT! Bloody touch me right now I am having a Bad Day” Gwyn growled as she took a step back and balanced her weight. The person who had grabbed her /was/ an orderly, her clothes looked like they were made from the same material as the hanging sheets, but cut well. 

“Please return to your bed, page Gwydian, I alerted the healer you were awake, and she’ll be around shortly to see to your condition.”

“My condition is fine. All I need are my glasses and clothes, though I can make do with just my glasses.”

“I’ll fetch them shortly, page Gwydian, just please do return to your bed and the healer will check up on you”

“No.” Gwyn drawled out the word, letting her frustration flavor and seep into it, “I will be leaving. Now. You can bloody well send me my effects to my rooms.”

“Page Gwydian, I must insist-” her eyes were tense and worried, flickering around the room behind Gwyn.

“I don’t care what you insist” Gwyn cried. Probably a bit too shrilly, a bit too loudly, “I won’t be held here. I’m healthy, I’m sane, I’m able bodied. I’m fucking leaving.”

Someone else was holding onto her elbow now, and even as she jerked away another hand clamped on her shoulder. Gwyn held back the instinct to kick out the knee of who ever was holding her and looked to make sure it wasn’t the High Duke. Instead, it was another orderly, this one built like page Leon, with bristly blonde and brown hair sticking up from his scalp like a porcupine was on his head. 

“Let. Go. Of. Me.” outrage and malice wrestled in her tone to be the first one to assault this new threat.  
He calmly replied, “Healer Wonred’s procedure, miss. Patients are to be checked out before exit”

“I couldn’t care less. Get your hands off of me.” Gwyn’s head was pounding with leashed violence and frustration. Bile was crawling up her throat 

“Merely return to your bed-” the first orderly was repeating

“I said no! YOU CAN’T KEEP ME HERE AGAINST MY WILL” 

The force of the yell itself shoved the barrel chested man away from her, but she didn’t stay put long enough to see if he was ok. She strode down the hallway back to where High Duke Gareth had been standing. The bronze handle on the door crumpled and fractured at her approach, and the door swung open at a touch. 

Outside the corridor of hospital bed cubbies was a comfy room, with lots of chairs and sofas, a side table with tea service, and High Duke Gareth reaching down to pick up a fallen book.   
She barely broke stride to bow as she kept walking out of the hospital wing, and towards the page wing. He called after her, but she wasn’t about to stop now. 

She kept the perfect posture one expects from a lord or lady, and kept the air that she was perfectly well dressed in the gown that only reached past her knees and was only closed in the back by two hand tied closures. Her furious glower seemed to help, people didn’t want to interrupt a tall heavily muscled page in a bad temper. No matter how shamefully they thought her dressed. 

Once safely in her rooms, Gwyn threw the hospital gown in the fire that was sleepily banked, and quickly got dressed. She had a spare set of glasses around somewhere…. Yes, here behind her formal page’s uniform in a rectangular box. 

She heard the bells toll the hour, and was relieved to hear she had only been asleep 3 hours. She shoved away thoughts that she had actually been asleep a day and 3 hours, or a week, or a year. She didn’t feel anything besides infuriated and a little hungry. Nothing at all like when she had last woke up in a hospital bed.   
Her afternoon’s class work was still waiting for her, stacked neatly by the door, so she grabbed all of it and rushed to the 3rd class of the day, mathematics. 

She had to end up running, since she dropped her papers and supplies a few times on the way. Gwyn felt rather silly for letting her nerves make her hands shake, but there wasn’t much to do besides keep on going. Happily, she wasn’t late, and slid into the seat next to Kurt Wagner. 

“How long have I been gone?” she asked while the monk at the head of the classroom was taking some extra time to get his things in order.  
“Huh? Just lunch and a couple classes, why? Should it be longer?”  
“No, just wanted to make sure. You alright?” her voice hurt so bad. It was an effort to speak above a whisper  
“I’m fine yes.”  
“Good, I’m-” she finished in a quiet whisper as the monk called the class to order, “I’m sorry I passed out like that. Not a good sponsor thing to do on the first day”

Kurt nervously nodded his understanding. There might have been a smile attempted in there too, but he focused in on the class. 

To Gwyn’s pleased and prideful surprise, Kurt was better at mathematics than she was. He had studied, evidently mastered, all sorts of complicated sums and operations as a merchant's son. The monk assigned him problems from a book on trigonometry. Gwyn was made to review more on calculating volume, density, and weight capacity of some hypothetical caravan supply loads. 

 

Sir HaMinch was waiting in military ease outside the classroom, and the pages all greeted him with the politeness expected outside of the training yard. As she went to follow her fellow pages to the next class room, Sir HaMinch held up a hand,   
“You’re excused from the next class. there’s a meeting that I’ve been sent to bring you to. Leave your books and things with the honorable Keaston here,” he indicated the monk. Gwyn wasn’t sure she had ever known his name before, “and follow me.”

There wasn’t much to say or do besides complying.


	17. In Which there is a Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sir haMinch, King Jonathan, various unnamed nobles

She expected a meeting in Sir HaMinch’s office, but he lead her out of the pages wing, and toward the more official sections of the palace. Gwyn hadn’t been to many of these areas, well, hadn’t been to many of them inside. She knew the roofs of most of the palace now. She felt like they were somewhere near the Royal Library, but not quite sure how to get there from here.   
“If I could ask sir, what sort of meeting is this?” Her normally gravely voice was hoarse and dry. Gwyn rubbed at her throat to try to soothe it. 

“It’s about a few things. But you’ll be answering questions about what happened in the hospital wing”

Air hissed out between Gwyn’s teeth “I’m getting questioned? Like I did something wrong? I am not going to be guilt tripped about snapping at some healers” 

Sir HaMinch turned on his heel to face her, “You are going to be in the presence of his majesty. You are going to swallow that damn temper of yours and only speak when questioned or bidden to speak directly.”

Gwyn was jealous of how there wasn’t any malice or threat in the commands. Just simple authority and knowledge he would be obeyed. 

She breathed out sharply, then inhaled and exhaled evenly. “Yes sir”

Without a nod or any other sign, he turned around abruptly again and began walking.

\----

They ended up outside a normal looking door in a normal looking hallway, except that there was a member of the king’s guard outside this door. The man’s dark complexion was spotted with brick red freckles, and his curly black hair had the same brick color where the light from the outside window hit it. He eyed sir Haminch for a moment, and then eyed Gwyn for a much longer, harder moment.   
He seemed satisfied, and knocked a rhythm on the door, which was opened by another king’s guard. Sounds of people talking came out of the cracked door, but quieted as it was opened.  
Sir HaMinch flashed her a look, his mouth could have been moving in a swallow, but she heard very quietly, “You’ll sit to my left” 

/Now that/, Gwyn thought, /is a neat trick of the voice/. She got distracted at the company that was assembled around a long table. There was King Jonathan, Numair, someone who had the look of a healer about her, a few others that dressed like high ranking nobles, and someone sitting by Numair was a scholar, probably a mage too from the way her rings and bracelets caught Gwyn’s attention. 

Gwyn bowed very low when Sir HaMinch bowed, and the she bowed a second time just to the king on principle. 

She sat where Sir HaMinch had indicated, and waited to hear what this was all about. 

Instead the king stood briefly, “Page Gwydian.” all the reflexes the last year had honed had her standing at attention before her name was done being said. She blinked in surprise, but didn’t keep her gaze off the spot right in front of her head. 

“Please give us a report of the occurrences after waking in the hospital wing, till you left.”  
Fuck. She was going to get in trouble for that temper tantrum. In front of strange noble people and Numair too. What a nightmare. She took a deep breath and began,

“I woke up in a panic and fell out of the bed before I realized I wasn’t still in the lake where I had fainted,” she kept the descriptions in rather bland terms, but not down playing any of her rudeness, though she didn’t repeat all the swearing word for word. Part of the way through, when her voice was going out, a servant passed her a glass of water. It helped a little so that she could finish. 

There was a quiet moment after she finished, out of the corner of her eye she saw some motion, and then the king seemed to nod and waved his hand. Numair stood and asked, “how many times since you woke up would you say you employed your gift?”

Huh? “None, Master Numair.” she tried to keep the confusion out of her rasping words. 

“Did you notice any magical effects, or anything strange about your gift during the time in question?”  
Gwyn tried to keep her growing confusion out of her face, and thought about it for a few heart beats. /Had she noticed any magic going on?/ Her gift felt fairly low, now that she was thinking about it. /That is unusual on its own right. She couldn’t ever remember being low on power. Was there a reason?/

“Nothing. However now that you mention it, it seems that my gift reserves are low. I’m not sure what caused that.”

“How often do your reserves get low? How much magic would you need to work in order to be so depleted?”

“My gift hardly ever gets low. I have been heavily taxed once, maybe twice before, in my admittedly short memory.”

“But you cannot remember what used up so much of your power?” Numair pressed, “even to guess?”

Had someone stolen some of her gift? They might have been able to create a link with her blood while she was passed out? What the hell was this all about?  
She took another long breath as she thought.  
Gwyn wasn’t sure what all to say. Maybe something had happened with the lake, and she had lost the memory. Maybe someone had stolen some of her gift. All she had were maybes. 

“I don’t have a direct memory of using my gift so much. Though, if it would be ok, I could talk some about the theory we were working on last year?”  
“please do” this was that velvety voice of the king. Gwyn took a nervous breath.  
“I was doing some studying with Master Numair last year, because I couldn’t wrap my head about a fairly basic exercise he wanted us to do in class.” Gwyn took a sec to lick her lips instead of saying something like Um or Uh, “it was fairly surprising to my instructors since I have a tri colored gift. When I finally accomplished the exercise, it didn’t really feel like how I… My apolgies, I’m trying not to get too technical. It didn’t feel like using my gift normally does. There have been some other instances where I’ve done something that others view as an affect of the Gift, but not one that feels like me using the gift. So the answer to ‘did I do any magic’ when I don’t remember doing any, can be, uh… hard for me to answer.”

“Give some examples” sir haMinch said, as the same time a lady in a bronze cloth jacket over green blouse asked “So you are not in control of your gift?”

“Well,” Gwyn looked between the two, and then resumed her staring straight ahead  
“I wouldn’t say someone else is in control of it either. Perhaps it’s a different method of accessing my gift that I haven’t quite mastered. Or read about in books either. For example, I’ve been able to jump long distances that would normally not be reachable. I’ve lifted heavy objects that others older and stronger than myself couldn’t lift. I’ve ah, punched things and left cracks in surfaces like tile or stone or wood, without the damage that one usually gets when punching those things. It doesn’t feel like using the gift, but the effects aren’t ordinary, so the theory I’m working with is that it is tied to my gift. I haven’t had as long as most people my age to study it. But I assure you I am working on it.”

Numair asked for more clarification, “You notice your power reserves have dwindled after the fact, but not that you’re using the gift at the time?” 

“That is what seems to happen. And the effects are all to my benefit, as far as I know. Not to anyone else's. I don’t think anyone’s stealing my gift. I think that’s a rather singular sensation. And one people have written about. So I’m pretty sure that’s not what happened. However, I was passed out for a few hours. So I’m not sure”

“What caused you to pass out?” the bronze jacket Lady asked

“My fear of water. The pages are learning to swim.” the words weren’t as politely toned as they should be.   
Gwyn tried her best to keep the frustration and shame and resentment from her voice.

“Not anything to do with your gift?” the lady pressed

Gwyn breathed in and out, quickly, sharply  
“Not that I know of. There was a lot I wanted to do when I was in the lake, but none of it happened. I was frozen pretty still.”

“The incident we are all talking about didn’t happen before lunch anyway, Kathlene” Master Numair soothed the lady. Gwyn wished they had done something like introductions. She couldn’t go around using only first names with unknown nobility.   
Wait, what incident?

“True…” this lady Kathlene sat back. “This magical theory is not what we were here to discuss. Let us get to the quick of it?” Gwyn wished she had eyes that could see out the side of her head, because she was pretty sure the lady wasn’t talking to her.

The king continued from there, so maybe it was him who was asked,  
“What was it you shouted? The people that heard it best haven’t been able to answer, and the rest of the palace just heard a voice.”

Gwyn gave up looking straight ahead and goggled at the king.

“The, the rest of the p, palace? Wh, wait, who haven’t been able to answer? Are they hurt? No one seemed hurt, I swear I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, if I had I would have just punched someone. I mean, I’m not answering your question. I’m babbling. Sorry. I shouted ‘let go’ or ‘get your hands off me’ no it was uh, ‘you can’t keep me here.’ the rest of the palace heard that? I wouldn’t have been shooting in the dark with what had happened if I had know that. I wasn’t trying to be obscurant.” 

Incredible sapphire eyes watched her impassively, and the king replied  
“I didn’t think you had been. We had been looking for more background on your magical gifts.”

“Oh, right. ok. I mean, thank you, your majesty.”

Gwyn felt questions burning at her throat. And a nasty worry that Duke Gareth had gotten hurt because of her. 

“Are there any other questions for Page Gwydian?” the king asked the table

The lady sitting by Numair, with a lovely array of gems and stones set in her jewelry, sat forward. Gwyn really wanted to talk with her about those. They must be enchanted. 

“How did you feel when this shout happened? Any similarities to the other instances you talked about? The lifting or punching or jumping?”

Anger is what first popped into her head, but Gwyn was pretty sure that answer wouldn’t be good for her to disclose to these people.   
“I’ve felt differently for each of them, I think. I was worried for my friend when I lifted a rock off him, and furious other times, and excited others. So it could be desperation or necessity that ties them all together.” /Desperation?/ that word in particular seemed significant, but someone was asking her a question she had to answer, 

“And at the hospital wing, you were desperate? Why?” 

A self deprecating smile spread over Gwyn's face like a comfortable mask,   
“Waking up in a hospital is something that has happened too much to me that I can remember. I stayed at one for a long time after a shipwreck. Waking up in a hospital after a nightmare of drowning is especially unpleasant to me.“

“Ah, then I believe we have a clear picture of the cause then.”

Gwyn comforted her curiosity with knowing she can get the information from Third. He was great at knowing what was happening at court.

“Page Gwydian, thank you for your time. You are excused from the rest of your classes today, please stay near the pages wing as your training master will be talking with you later today.”

Gwyn was grateful for the dismissal. She bowed, said the requisite things for leaving the royal presence, and bowed again on her way out. 

The king’s guard on the inside of the door knocked before he let her leave, and the guard on the outside opened the door. It was a tidy ‘all clear’ method, Gwyn thought. 

Outside, she turned to ask the outside guard “what happened exactly? They didn’t say, but it seems like it’s got them bothered.”

“Ask someone who ain’t guarding, kid.” the guard quipped. His accent was astonishingly of the lower city. Almost in the cant she had heard from pickpockets. 

“yessir” she drawled back, and gave him a clipped salute.


	18. In which there is a punishment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sir haMinch, Graveyard Hag

Crap now I didn't have anything to do.  
She went to the pages' wing and took a tour of all the different instructors, apologizing for missing class but asking for the course work so she didn't get behind. 

That done, she again felt listless, so just went to her rooms and sat.   
Her pair of glasses and some laundered page clothes she assumed had been in the lake with her were waiting for her. 

There was coursework to do, she could exercise, she could grab some lunch even. All that was possible, and she still just sat. Thoughts and worries and plans skittered around like water on a hot pan. when she tried to focus on one, it moved and seemed to dissolve away.  
for the first time, Gwyn didn't want to wake up tomorrow and do more page training. She didn't want to face the other pages. her course work was right by her hand, but it seemed like it would take so much effort to get to. Like it was across a lake, or up a mountain. 

/I did something bad. They didn’t even say how bad, so it must be very bad/ Gwyn thunked the back of her head against the wall /I did a bad thing. I don't know how to fix it./

Gwyn sat, dully, hoping she would either fall asleep, or someone would come by to snap her out of this state.   
She tried to order herself to stand up, to bribe herself with getting some coffee, cake, and a bowl of soup. but those thoughts fizzled out like evaporating water too. 

The door opened and she started guilty. Bexy came in and smiled,   
"There she is. was worried about you miss. Heard you were given leave of classes today. Shall I brew you a pot of coffee?"

With someone to react to, smiling and nodding was easy, "yes please Bexy. you're a lifesaver. I haven't had lunch either-"

"Say no more miss Gwyn. I'll get you a tray. Things in the kitchen have settled down after the kerfuffle, so once I get the coffee going, It will be quick to get you a late lunch."

"Thank you thrice, Bexy"

As her friend busied about making coffee, Gwyn busied about sorting through assignments and making a study plan for the evening. Gwyn bit her lip and made herself ask as casually as possible,

“What was the kerfuffle about?”

“Hm? Oh it was the funniest thing. Some of the animals got out, and people went chasing all over after them. The servants areas were pretty short handed for a while.” 

Bexy seemed so relaxed and amused. If the king was worried, surely it would have been something the servants   
would have noticed too? /Maybe it’s just that it was magical that’s got the mages in a tizzy./

Gwyn sipped from the tiny glass cup and felt the hot coffee hit her stomach. It seemed to light a lamp behind her eyes. The warmth from the cup, and the definite plan of study kept her moving when Bexy left to get lunch.

Later, cold sandwiches and sliced fruit disappeared. Gwyn lost herself in focusing on class work. She had to write the same thing out two or three times to keep her handwriting neat and clean. She wanted to say she was just out of practice, but she was pretty sure it was nerves from all that had happened. Still she rewrote things while chiding herself on being so skittish. She wanted to be a great knight and fight for her country and save people, but this is how she reacted after being knee deep in water, throwing a tantrum in a hospital, and hearing she had caused some trouble for some mages? Ridiculous. 

Sir HaMinch sent a message that he wanted to meet an hour before dinner, but she should dress for dinner before the meeting as it might be a long meeting.   
Gwyn groaned inwardly at the thought of another meeting. This one would certainly deal with punishments. She dressed in the standard page's dinner attire: the formal gold hose and red tunic. With her sword belted at her hip, she felt a little better. The weight settled her, and she hoped they would start using the weighted harnesses soon.   
She was early for the meeting, even with a full stomach and calming herself, dread was like a greasy stink she couldn't get away from. /But what could they really do? punishment work I could deal with. they weren't going to turn away the last of the Haryse direct line/ They needed her to marry and keep a territory war from break out. and She couldn't be banished.

Sir HaMinch and his office were just as they always were. Goodness knows Gwyn had been here often enough to be familiar with it.   
Gwyn stood at attention and waited to be addressed.   
"Sit, page, sit down."

Gwyn perched on the edge of the chair as HaMinch took his own high backed chair behind the desk.

"you have been found at fault for a lot of damage around the castle, Page Haryse."

Gwyn tilted her head to get a better look at the training master. She thought back through her day, there was the black out, the yelling, the class, the meeting and then now this meeting.   
"I did something I don't remember, then. At the lake? Coming back to the castle? What did I break? Was anyone hurt?"

Sir HaMinch raised his hand to stop the flow of questions,  
"Nothing that direct. We have it from Master Numair that you cast a spell on the castle, during the argument with the healers."  
Gwyn shook her head in disbelief, and fought the urge to interrupt.

"Master Numair also explained many things. I think after a while, only the King was keeping up with the explanation. You and he can talk more about it later, I'm sure. For now, my job is to explain what will be changing in your training schedule."

 

Gwyn's teeth creaked, she was clenching her jaw so hard. her leg bounced up and down rapidly with pent up nervous energy.  
/why wouldn't he tell her if anyone was hurt? what did he mean by changing the schedule? it was a time honored schedule! Was that life boat thing last year not enough to change?/

"Each Sunday until midwinter you're going to be spending the afternoons with various people. I'll get you a schedule in a minute. The Provost, the high magistrate, the person in charge of the menagerie, professor Lindhall, the chief of staff, and the captain of the palace guard are some of who you will be meeting with."

Gwyn goggled, but he wasn't done yet,  
"Each evening after supper you will report to me for a bell's time. And you will have your magical studies classes privately with Master Numair until you two sort this gift of yours out."

"Why?" Gwyn erupted, " What the hell did i do? I don't even know what all these punishments are for! What the hell does the Lord Provost, the menagerie and the chief of staff all have in common?"  
"Manners, page, I didn't give leave for you -"

"Oh I'm sorry, what ever will you do to further punish me?!" she sprang up from the chair and threw her hands up in the air in exasperation.

"I'm not worried about sending you to scour pots in the kitchens, page Gwydian. Get a hold of yourself. And sit back down."

"Just sentence me the extra punishment already, I'm going to pace, and honestly, scouring pots is at least a standard punishment that one expects a page to do. And on top of everything else that I'll be doing till midwinter, it sounds downright homey" Gwyn grumbled as she paced in front of the desk.

Sir HaMinch tracked her with a steady gaze, but didn't say more about the pots,   
"If I can continue without further interruption, the reason why you will be meeting with people on Sundays is to rectify all the things that have disrupted palace life since this morning. There were two prison escapes, over a dozen people turned in their resignations, a number of guardsmen abandoned their posts and are dealing with their own punishments as we speak, there were a couple animal escapes from the menagerie, as well as some damage to other animal pens and stables around the palace, and the Lord Magistrate has had a steady stream of filings for divorce every hour."

Gwyn stared at him in astonishment. How could they even pin all that down on her? 

A shadow behind the training master shifted, and Gwyn's eyes tracked it, her page training warning of hidden attackers. Out from behind the knight came an old serving woman, far too old to still be working. Her arms were so skinny the elbows looked swollen, and her stained and raggedly sewn servants uniform didn’t hide how her ribs poked out. Gwyn tired to cover her surprise at the woman’s appearance by looking to the training master, but he was ignoring the old servant. He still looked like he was expecting an answer from her, and cooly pulled some paperwork toward him to tap it into neat order. 

“Don’t you worry, dearie, he can’t hear us while we have a chat about what a wreck you’ve made of things. Again.”  
The voice was grating and creaked on the vowels, but that’s not what made Gwyn flinch. She recognized it as the same voice that had scared her at the Black God’s temple years ago.   
Gwyn swallowed her displeasure and worry, best to be polite to deities. “graveyard hag, hello again. it’s been, what, a year and a half, two years since you visited me last?”

“Oh? Is that the only visit you remember? Tsk such a terrible mind you have my poppet” The thin, sagging face wrinkled up into a smirk. 

Rage, delightfully violent rage tore through Gwyn. She could feel it ripping down her throat, her lungs, groin, and into the bones of her arms and legs. She wanted to bite and scratch, crush and wrench, and laugh at the screams she caused.   
It was gone as soon as Gwyn turned to face the hag, leaving her dragged down, cold and shaking by shock and disgust at herself. Gwyn gasped, eyes bulging. Her stomach felt filled with bile and scorpions. 

The goddess gurgled and choked at a laugh.   
“You don’t really think you could hurt me, do you dearie? After all I’ve done for you.”

Gwyn suggested that she “go fuck a duck sideways”

The goddess’s broken and serrated fingernails grabbed her by the ear and dug in till Gwyn felt something wet seep into her ear and down her hair onto her neck.  
“Listen to me, sweetling, I didn’t come all the way here to be insulted. I'm here, as always, to help you, my pet. You need me. Without me, you’re nothing. Just another bloated body nibbled by fish and dragged to shore by currents to be torn apart by gulls and crabs. I’m here to remind you that you are nothing without me.” 

Gwyn shuddered with the urge to run, or fight. Her hands were free. And this form of the goddess’s could be broken easily. The pain in her ear redoubled and a thick yellow thumb nail rested right below her left eye,   
“Try it, my darling, try and see what happens when you think to lay hands on a goddess. You damn blasphemer.” 

Gwyn panted from the pain and fear. She looked at sir haMinch again. He had folded his hands together and was watching with patience at the whole exchange. 

“What the fuck do you want, Hag.” spat out Gwyn, 

“A thank you would be nice. Some praises. After all, I did help you, even if you went and ruined it for everyone else. You’ve got a nasty habit of that, dearie. Always using my gifts to destroy other people’s lives. The only thing you’re good at is ruination” the last word was spoken with love and reverence, and pride. Like a grandma bragging about the achievements of her favorite grandchild. 

“Is that all? Cause that seems like a waste of your time. The way this year is going, I won’t have time to visit your shrine till I'm a hundred and five.”   
There wasn’t hiding any of the anger and fear Gwyn felt from coming out in her voice. It shook and changed from loud to whisper and back again as her breath came and went. 

The pain in Gwyn’s ear got hotter, there was a sickening feeling of a crunch and the too close sound of grinding. Gwyn tried to grab onto that pain, to use it to fuel her inner furnace, to prepare to fight back or at least get control over herself. But the pain was too big, to slick. Instead of getting a hold of it, it rolled past her mind, and left afterimages and tingles of pain down her jaw, neck and whole right side. Gwyn couldn’t help whimpering, but managed to turn it into weak cuss words

“That’s my dearie, always foul and fighting” the goddess leaned in and planted a wet kiss on Gwyn’s forehead. 

“Don’t say I don’t look after you. I gave you so many nice things. It brings light to my heart when you think to use them. But dearie, do try and cause some more bloodshed next time? Hm? For me? As a nice thank you.”

the old serving woman vanished, Gwyn slumped back into her chair and gasped weakly, “Fuck.” she raised a shaking hand to her ear to check the damage.   
Sounding nonplussed, and talking like he was responding to her soft curse, the training master expounded "Master Numair has established that it was your magic that started all of this. You can talk with him about how that all works. Fault has been determined. Punishment is being sentenced.” Sir haMinch continued like no time had passed

Gwyn’s ear wasn’t bleeding, in fact it felt fully healed. But it had been notched, as if a knife had torn through it a long time ago. She glared at him in consternation. He seemed to take this as reaction to what he had said and he pressed on,   
”If you refuse this, you'll be in contempt of his Majesty's rulings and facing far worse. They'd be trying to decide between willful obstruction of justice or treason then."

Gwyn had had enough of being pushed around by people more powerful than herself,  
"This is such bullshit! I'm thirteen! and i only have 3 years of memories technically, who sentences a thirteen year old for treason?"

"I notice you're not arguing against the punishments you have been handed any more”

“I can if you want me to. I would have if I had known what that meeting with the king was about. I might have lost my temper but-” the rest was choked off in a coughing fit. Gwyn couldn’t get her breath. She hacked and coughed till watery blood came up. It stank like the sea in her handkerchief. she had been about to talk about the Graveyard Hag’s interference, but that horrid goddess had stopped her. 

Gwyn stood up and started pacing again.   
“But,” Sir HaMinch continued for her, his ice blue eyes following her back and forth, “Your temper mixing with your magic in that way had consequences you obviously didn’t intend. And couldn’t control. You’ll be working with Master Numair to better understand and control whatever kind of magic this was, and you’ll be working with the people in charge of many different sectors of the castle in order to better understand and fix the harm you have done.”

“So, the issues I’ve caused, that’s all cause people or animals left their jobs or holding cells or marriages when I said, uh… what did I say, it was something like ‘get your hands off me’?”

“people report it was ‘you can’t keep me here against my will’ “

“so wouldn’t that indicate, if I was casting a spell on the castle through those words, that they didn’t want to be where they were? Those were unhappy workers, marriages, animals?”

“and unhappy prisoners. don’t forget those escapees. And the animals that escaped were not sweet song birds, but predators. The master of the menagerie will speak with you about that later. Believe me, page Gwydian, whatever your argument, someone at that meeting has said it, it has been argued against, and we are left with the judgment I already told you.”

“Or I'm held in contempt of the law, exiled to my lands, or found to be treasonous, and exiled from the country or killed. Great. Mithros bless our magistrates and the country’s law. “

Sir haMich started a reply but Gwyn steam rolled over him   
“You know, Daine destroyed an entire castle, caused thousands of dollars of damage to a country we went to war against using unfamiliar magics. What was her punishment again? Nothing? Not even from the Cartharki?” Gwyn tried to emphasize the similarity. Daine had used the Hag’s power then to destroy the imperial seat of Carthark. 

“Daine wasn’t a page in the royal service, causing mischief and disruption inside her own country’s seat of power. I couldn’t get them to lesson the sentence, page Gwyn, I doubt you can”

Gwyn halted the pacing and looked at him suspiciously, “You tried to change it?” 

“You’re not going to be very good to the crown as a page if you’re exhausted from things outside the training regimen. But when they threatened to ban you from page training, I had to back down. Too many people want you married before they want you to have a shield.”

Gwyn folded her arms and looked at him in confusion. Reevaluating him. She hadn’t expected that sort of frank admission of solidarity from him. The training master usually talked like the pages were all interchangeable and completely dispensable. 

“Thank you. Sir. I guess. When do I start? I have classwork.”

“Master Numair is waiting for you at Balor’s Needle.”

“… I'm just supposed to ignore that pages aren’t allowed up there, right?”

“You’ve been given special permission. The mage says it’s clear of interference. Or something like that. Besides, the exercise up there will help you clear your head. You’ve had a rough start to the year.”

Gwyn waved her hand in a lazy blocking gesture, “I'm not worried about things being rough”

Sir haMinch stood up and came over to the door. He placed a hand on her shoulder,  
“I’ve noticed. If you survive the wait and then survive the Chamber, you’ll make one hell of a knight, page Gwydian”

He opened the door and used the hand on her shoulder to propel her out. The door was closed before she could say anything in reply.


	19. In Which There is a Magic Lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Numair

Gwyn made her way out of the pages wing and then over to balor’s needle. She went inside, the large chandelier was lit, so she didn’t need to worry about grabbing a torch. She trudged up, pondering the vision she had of the Graveyard Hag.  
/Maybe Numair or Daine could help her with this? They had experience with the divine realms and gods. She had felt so powerless. That was the most annoying part. Even that amazing surge of deceive and activating rage had felt somehow outside of herself. Like it came from another source. Was she supposed to believe all her surges of power and strength had come from the Graveyard Hag? The hag had insinuated and hinted at a lot of things. She had threatened and claimed credit. But how reliable was this anyway? Did gods lie? What the heck were gods anyway? What purpose did they serve? How did they become gods, or how did they control things they claimed to? Could Mithros really decide a battle? Or create a law? Could the goddess really control if someone got pregnant? Or change the phase of the moon? And if they could, how?/ 

She ran out of stairs before she ran out of questions.  
“Maybe I should just become a priest. But I doubt they would even know” she muttered as she opened the door to the observatory atop balor’s needle. 

Numair stood, resting his dark hands on the bannister around the edge of the tower. The wind tugged on his long ponytail full of tight curls, and his black robes. The mage’s beard and hair were mostly grey with touches of black, the opposite of his two color gift of a black field speckled with white points of light. 

Gwyn sidled over to his side, resting her forearms on the bannister and looking out. The view of the city was very pretty. The sun made long slashing shadows of everything. But the view looking down was much more fun. The castle workers and other personnel looked like ants. The smaller sheds were doll houses. From this height, it was easy to imagine flying over everything, soaking in the sun and coasting on top of clouds. 

Softly, Numair murmured,  
“I'm glad you seem to be relaxed.”

“I love heights. They feel freeing.”

Numair gazed out for another long minute. The picture of relaxation and contentment.  
Gwyn decided to push things along, she had a mountain of classwork already,  
“How are we going to figure this magic thing out?”

“Well,” he rumbled, “I'm not going to hand you over to the university to study, so don’t worry about that.”  
Gwyn looked up at his face to see if he was joking. His long dark brown face with strong brow, nose and jaw looked wry.  
“Yes, some of them even asked when we were first looking into the cause. I had to remind them that people alas, were not textbooks.”

“Ha. Ha.” Gwyn made the noises without humor.

“We will begin rather simply. If you allow, I can allow you to see the currents of magic around yourself. And I can see the same that you do. It was quite enlightening for Daine, but I don’t expect things to go as they did when I was teaching her control of her magic. Are you ready to begin?”

“I suppose. What if, uh, it’s not my gift exactly, but something else? Some other magic that’s not really mine?”

“One step at a time, alright?” his voice was assuring. “It caught people by surprise today, but that doesn’t mean It iis a bad thing, or an unnatural thing for you to have. There’s no need to jump to conclusions and start rejecting your abilities before we even have a look to see what they are.”

“R-right. ok. What do I do?”  
They sat cross legged facing each other, and with a murmur and a roll of his hands, Numair bid her to open her eyes. 

Normally, she could see when people cast magic. Their gift left traces in the air, or tinted the object of the spell. Now she could see the inner magic inside Numair, a globe the size of her arms opened out in a circle in front of her. It looked like a transparent night sky. The observation deck had glowing lines and shapes that looked like wards, protections, and charms to aide in sight. The bannister was full of safety charms, and barrier to keep people from falling.  
Gwyn looked down at herself, and saw the comforting colors of twilight’s pink, purple, and blue. It formed an amorphous cloud, maybe the size of her head. It was centered at her sternum, where as Numairs concise globe was centered at his solar plexus. 

Gwyn stood up, and turned around. Looking for something other than the three colors that gently shifted and swirled around each other in her chest. 

“I don’t see anything. Is there something at my throat? Or on my head or back?” she looked over her shoulder at the globe that hid most of Numair. He stood also, and circled around her. At one point, it seemed like his globe of magic should bump into her, or move, but it didn’t move, didn’t shrink, but also didn’t touch her, even when she purposefully moved a hand toward it. It was like when her eye had swollen shut, and she could only see out of one eye for a day. She had dropped books and pens off of a table when she misjudged how far away the table was. And knocked over a glass when she thought it was arm's reach away, when it was just a small glass right by her hand. 

“Well that’s headache inducing. it’s like a mirage, or… dunno. It doesn’t seem to act properly.”

“Hm?” Numair seemed distracted by something.

“Your gift. it’s a globe that’s bigger than you are around. So I should be able to” she mimed pushing against something at him, “But when I try, or when you get close enough that it should bump me or do something to interact, it doesn’t. And it also doesn’t seem to move away.”

“Ah. It isn’t a physical entity. It is a way for your mind to interpret what you are sensing due to the spell. The magical effects you see won’t react to things in an intuitive manner unless you become accustomed to seeing and manipulating them like this.”

It was Gwyn’s turn for a monosyllable grunt of a reply. She looked over the edge of balcony.  
“Holy Fuck! Holy! Fuck! This is amazing! Holy shit on a stick, look at the university! it’s like a bonfire! Oh man, and the palace? Is that king Jonathan’s blue magic everywhere? Shit does he have spying spells everywhere? Or is that just to help out the defenses? Hey! I can see Ahmond and Duke Baird from here! I can see their gifts even through all the stone? That’s wild. I had no idea Ahmond was that powerful. Or is he just close by?”  
Gwyn played sight seer for a while. She could spot Daine and Toby by their copper colored Wild Magic. And the specks and flecks of copper from the palace animals seemed brighter, freshly shined, the closer they were to Daine. Then she went to look out at the city again, shamelessly taking advantage of this magic to see cool things instead of diagnose herself. 

Between the city and the palace was the temple district. She peered at it. Could this magic ability see if there really was some tie between herself and the Graveyard Hag?  
She turned to ask Numair, but couldn’t get the words out. She coughed and choked on her own saliva.  
/That damn goddess./ She spat into her handkerchief again.  
Without trying to speak, she tugged on Numair sleeve and pointed at the temple district. But as she pointed, her arm cramped, twisted, and her fingers cramped into claws. 

/Wait. If there was something keeping me from showing or sharing this with anyone, surely it would show up as a magical effect?/ Gwyn looked at the handkerchief, and at her hand. They didn’t seem any different.  
She tried to point again, this time studying her arm. Even as the cramps struck and she could see the muscles knot up, she didn’t see anything extra. Anything magical or strangely colored. 

 

A dusty, creaky voice whispered in a sing song tone in her notched ear, “naughty, naughty” this time the cramps were in her stomach. Lower down than the cramps from dry heaving felt, and they reached down the front of her legs too.  
Gwyn groaned, and pressed a hand just below her belly button. It hurt in a deep throb, not sharp and twisting like the cramps to her arm had been. Gwyn gathered up the feeling of pain as she breathed deep and carefully straightened up to stretch. 

“Ok, well, I don’t think this is working.” her voice sounded strained as well as rough and gravely. It suddenly bugged her how annoying having a rough voice was. The other girl pages had very lovely voices. She didn’t think the voice made her sound tough any more. Just grating and whiney. Great. Another thing to hate about herself. 

“I believe it is a good start. Here, I'll dispel it. Are you feeling well?” now Numair, he had a wonderful voice. Deep and mellow. She would enjoy his voice reading her math homework just for the sound of it.  
“No. Cramps.”  
“Have you eaten anything that disagrees with you? Do you need a healer?”  
“I haven’t had anything since breakfast. And no, I don’t need a sodding healer.”  
“We’ll end for today then. And tomorrow I'll make sure to have some food at hand”  
“I don’t need you mothering me Numair. Trust me, I know how to get food in the castle. It’s not hunger cramps. Stop being so assumptive. And don’t mention going to a healers again. I’ve got this.”  
She breathed in carefully and looked toward the sky.  
“I'm sorry, that was very rude of me. Thank you for your concern, master Numair. I believe I will be fine in a minute.”

All the extra wonderful lights and colors faded from her vision, and Numair explained,  
“We’re done up here anyway, We’ve completed the initial assessment. I need to review some of my materials before we continue working together.”  
She could hardly refuse in a way that seemed polite, so after a last long look at the amazing view, she followed him down the spiraling interior stairs. 

At the bottom, she bowed again. "I believe Sir HaMinch indicated we would be doing one on one tutoring for a while during the magical study hour. Is there anything you would like me to research or report on when we meet tomorrow?”  
The most powerful mage in the land rubbed his hands together thoughtfully.  
“A written report of what happened to you in the palace hospital, and another on what you saw and felt during this session would be helpful to reference later.”  
“Yes, master Numair. Until tomorrow then?”  
“Yes yes, thank you for meeting me up there. The isolation is helpful for this sort of work. Have a good night, page Gwyn”


	20. In Which Things are Not That Bad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maura of Dunlith, Third, Bastion, Bexy, sir haMinch

Gwyn tracked down Bastion to the page's wing library. He was sitting with her ducklings from last year. Old habits seem to die hard since they were all here like she remembered. 

"Thanks for substituting for me fellas. I can't believe it's only been one day."  
Suspicion and feel gripped her spine, "It has only been one day, right? Today is the first day of term, and Bastion's first day as a page? I wasn't in a coma for a year, was I?" 

Some of them chuckled, like she might be joking, but Ahmond patted her elbow   
"Sit and study with us. It is the same day. No time has passed you by. However, you are very behind the group with course work. Here, Third, Bastion and I took notes for you."

She scratched the top of Ahmond's braided head in thanks, and settled down. Lights out came too soon, so Gwyn took her things back to her room. She promised to explain things to Bexy in the morning over coffee, and finished up her class work around midnight.

Tired and feeling hungry, she changed into her bathrobe and laid down on the camping bed.

She closed her eyes and breathed in to relax. All the sensations of being in the water rushed up out of the darkness behind her eyes. She snapped them open. /Ok. So. Sleep was not going to be easy./  
Tossing and turning, she wrestled with sleep that didn't come with nightmares.  
When the light outside started to brighten, and Bexy started to stir, Gwyn sighed with relief. 

She washed the groggy sand out of her eyes and stiffly stretched. The coffee was brewing and life seemed worth living as she started press ups and other exercises for the day.  
She walked Bexy through everything. She didn't try to bring up the Graveyard Hag and thus avoided any cramps or coughing fits.  
Bexy told her side of things, hearing the shout, the trouble with the kitchen animals. At first she had thought that was the only problem, but then the servants had all been swamped with people quitting and lords and ladies demanding to move to other rooms.   
“I think milord haMinch is right though, you do like extra work. Even when you were leading your ducklings you jumped at the chance to help his Grace with a project. Besides, I hear the Lord Provost is quite dashing.”

Gwyn rolled her eyes. She wasn't sure there is a guy in the castle better looking than Sir haMinch or the king. It wasn't till Bexy was laughing up a fit that Gwyn realized she had said that out loud.  
"Oh, shut up you. And just try to tell me they are bad looking. I'm going on a run. Thank you for the coffee, you goofball."  
The weighted harness felt good during the run. Gwyn liked how it would float one moment and then settle down firmly the next as she jogged along. She looked forward to wearing heavy armor and towering over people in fights like Sir Kel did.   
She made sure Bastion was dressed and ready before breakfast. The company was nice, and Gwyn was pleased to see that Zack of Bluehaven was still there at the pages table. From their talks last year, she wasn't sure if he would have stayed after her supposed magic that made people want to quit jobs and divorce each other. Maybe he had found an internal reason for staying after all.

Gwyn couldn't eat much other than some coffee and the apple and pear pieces from her porridge. Having a full stomach seemed pointless with the lake looming over her.  
Being a second year did have its advantages. The morning training was exciting. Even exhausted, Gwyn did well in hand to hand and weapons practice. But in archery the long night showed. Her hands were trembling enough she was more likely to hit the target next to hers.  
She kept her focus and her temper on a short leash. She kept obeying all the prompts a helpful seeming Ahmond and a frustrated haMinch would give her. She was a flustered mess during horsemanship practice. Habit kept her in the saddle and her tack well taken care of. But her focus was shot to shit.

\---

She found herself holding her sides as the pages trotted toward the lake. With a growl, she would change position to clench her fists on her sides.

Only once did she hear someone start to taunt, "hey Gwyn! You sca-" only to interrupt themselves, "ow! What the heck Third?”

Again the pages were split up between experienced and inexperienced swimmers. But before heading out with the good swimmers, sir haMinch addressed her, "Page Gwyn. Make a survey of the west coast of the lake. Note plants and animals, and where they appear. Any animals or plants you don't know, you are to make note of and identify later. I expect a report tomorrow after lunch, before your classes begin."

She didn't have to get in the treacherous ooze that is the lake water? Just study the coast? Relief mixed with shame as she saw the leers on some of the new and older pages that didn't like her. She felt most stung by the pitying and reassuring look from Ermengarde. The unspoken taunts were right. This was baby's work. As she crouched to better inspect the weeds on the beach she decided that it was much. Much. Much better than getting in the lake. Even seeing her friends splash in fun made her worry for them. 

No plants threatened to wrap around her ankles and suck her down into the lake. And the animals seemed very curious. She told the ones that got close that she was afraid of water, so was studying the plants and animals that lived in the lake. After that, a family of turtles would play in the shallows near her, and a heron followed her up and down the beech. It would peck at plants and even caught a fish for her. The poor thing flopped and squirmed on the shore as Gwyn backed up. Hurriedly explaining,  
‘I'm not here to eat, but thank you for showing me the fish. It probably wants to go back home now. Or, I guess you might want to eat it? I don’t want it. But thank you?” the heron turned it’s head to a profile to study Gwyn with a tiny eye, then snapped up the fish. Gwyn wasn’t sure if she had ever seen a bird guilt trip someone before. It certainly seemed like that was what the heron was trying to do. The hour of that class was slow and torturous even with the companionship of cute animals. /But at least,/ Gwyn thought, /I didn’t faint./ 

She followed Ermengarde to the girl’s bath house. Gwyn felt nauseous seeing the patterns of light the lamps reflecting off the bath pool made. She turned her back to undress and asked a servant to fetch a bucket of water for her. Even the sounds were nauseating. Like someone eating porridge with their mouth open. Gwyn didn’t do much of a wash, just scrubbed with a soapy cloth and then poured the bucket down her front and another bucket full down her back.   
Half way into her fresh clothes, a servant came over to her with another loin cloth and a thick rectangle of cotton cloth. “My lady, forgive me for disturbing you. I couldn’t help but notice...”  
Gwyn looked at her blankly, “did I miss a spot?” Gwyn twisted to inspect herself but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.   
“Please excuse me for being so forward, but your monthly bleeding, my lady. You seem to have started. I wanted to offer a pad and fresh underthings. If my lady wishes, I could explain in more detail? Or escort you to a healer?”  
“my… monthly?” she had menstruated not ten days ago. The timing was off. /Was this something the Hag did? But she’s supposed to be a crone, and crones don’t menstruate./   
“No, I don’t need more details. Nor escorts. Thank you for your assistance.” Gwyn grumbled. 

\---

At lunch, Gwyn had coffee and picked at the food. None of it seemed appetizing, and she still felt too nauseous from being around so much water to force herself to eat. A lunch of coffee, juice, and milk would have to do. Despite not feeling well herself, she badgered Bastion into finishing his second helping of turkey with creamy pepper gravy. 

Gwyn had written and rewritten her assignment for reading and writing three times last night. So the teacher didn't have much to complain about her penmanship. Gwyn was relieved she wouldn’t have to spend additional hours that week copying lines like last year. Math was another class she didn’t worry too much about. Though after seeing the interesting designs and notes that Bastion handed in as his homework, Gwyn resolved to improve quickly. Those problems looked far more intriguing than supply caravan questions. 

Gwyn was very happy to be back in professor Maura of Dunlith’s classroom. She said hello to the snake that had kept her company last year, explaining to the beauty,   
"I was in the infirmary yesterday. I missed you very much.” the female king snake butted the top of her head against Gwyn’s hand, and then rose up tall to better start climbing onto Gwyn’s arm. At the end of the class, when Gwyn was carefully letting Queensnake back into her enclosure, Professor Maura came up to her with a disheveled collection of folios and books.  
"I was asked to provide you with these. They detail the ecosystem one can normally find around a lake in Tortall. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to come by and ask.” her round cheeks dimpled in a smile. 

“Erm, yes, professor. Thank you very much. I think these will be very helpful. Thank you for sparing me the time to collect them from the library later.” Gwyn took them with a bow. Outside the class she had to set them down and better organize the stack. It was in danger of falling apart.

\---

She was the last to arrive at the class the pages with the magical gift attended. As soon as her bottom touched the chair next to Ahmond, master Numair called her name and she was up again. She handed him a small packet of papers and sketches showing what she had sensed yesterday, and how things in the infirmary had seemed to go for her.   
Instead of taking the time to go up to Balor’s Needle’s observatory deck, master Numair had her sit in an empty class room on the floor. Before they began, he stooped and drew a wide circle around the room with chalk. When he came to where he started, he muttered something low, and the white circle flickered with the colors of his gift.   
“The circle is to contain any energies we release here, and to keep any others from interfering with us during the session. Today I want to focus on how you normally cast magic. Make a ball of light.”  
Gwyn drew up a thread of her gift and shaped it into the knot that would create a ball of light. She didn’t use any hand motions, just twisted the thread mentally, using the memory of how the thread should be shaped from hundreds of other castings. A ball as big as her fist floated above her shoulder, colors swirling, but never mixing. 

Then Numair had her break down each step she had done. Asking questions about why and how she used her fit this way. Unlike last year, he wasn’t telling her to do it another way, but seeming honestly interested in how she did things. The way he would study the air before the ball of light was formed let her know he could see what she was doing with her gift before the magic actually took effect.   
The work was easy, and the company was pleasant. But Gwyn was feeling awfully uncomfortable physically by the time they were done. Whether it was this monthly bleeding or not eating well the past two days, her stomach and gut were complaining strenuously. 

\---

Luckily the last class of the day was just writing letters of invitation, thanks, regret, and sympathy to different imaginary people for imaginary balls, gifts, requests, and family problems. The wordings and forms of address all seemed fairly common sense to Gwyn, even with her limited experience of this world of social niceties. All she had to focus on was ignoring her stomach and forming her letters neatly. Bastion was not doing so well as the etiquette teacher drilled the first years on basic court manners. Gwyn gave him encouraging nods and sympathetic smile when he was assigned extra work tonight, and spent the rest of the class bowing. 

It was only the second day, but she had made it through without any extra work. Now there was just dinner, and an hour with the training master at the damn lake.   
Before supper, she went back to her rooms to drop off books and change.   
“Now miss, you go to supper, they are making that sausage and bacon stew you like so well. Say you’ll eat a bowl for me, and I'll have coffee and some orange rolls waiting for you later. Don’t think I haven’t seen you eating poorly.”  
"I don’t deserve you Bexy. Are you sure you’re not some divine immortal creature?”   
“Oh hush up you, keep your flattery for your future lovers”

The bacon and sausage stew was delicious. The savory flavors mixed with thyme and garlic chased away most of her nausea. The peas on her tray she placed in a waxed pouch for later. She hoped herons and turtles liked the flavorless things more than she did. 

She made plans to study later with her friends and her stiff shouldered sponsoree. Bastion told her all the work he had to do, and she helped him make a study plan before dinner was over. He seemed to get more comfortable as the amorphous gloomy cloud of work was divided up into manageable chunks.   
“divide and conquer, my ol chap” Gwyn quipped as they were putting up their meal trays. 

\---

Gwyn changed out of her dinner clothes, a green tunic over faded brown hose and shirt, and into standard page work clothes. Undyed shirt, breeches, and padded jacket.   
When she reported to the training master’s office, a servant waiting in front of the door handed her a note. ‘Page Gwydian, meet at the west coast of the lake. - lord Pendraig of haMinch’  
Gwyn wiped a hand across her face. More of that fucking lake. Her stomach cramped around the supper she had enjoyed. She set her destination as the lake, without allowing herself to think about what would come after she arrived. 

The training master was standing at ease next to a small pile of equipment. It was the heavy duty sparring equipment the older pages used in their skirmish practices. The training master already had most of his on, a leather coat with metal rings sewn onto it, canvas trousers with metal grieves covering the shins, bracers with metal splits to protect the forearms. At his feet was the men helmet the Yamani used during sparring practice with blades. The face was covered by a grid of thin metal rods. These allowed good air circulation and visibility. It looked flimsy protection until you realized how heavy they were. Another feature of the men helmet was heavy shoulder and throat padding that draped off the helmet. The men helmets used in Tortall differed from traditional Yamani ones, they also included heavy padding for the back of the head and down the top of the neck. 

Also at the training master’s feet were two practice staffs. He lifted his chin as she took in the equipment.  
“Suit on up, page. we’re going to have a long hour of sparring. You should be familiar with the terrain over here.”  
There wasn’t much to say besides the requisite ‘yes sir’ as Gwyn suited up. The armor smelled like a war between dozens of sweating bodies and astringent detergent. Gwyn loved it. Combined with the heavy snug feeling from the armor, she felt both calm and comforted and amped up. 

She waited to hear the terms of the sparring as she gathered her staff. It was weighted with a metal core. The leather of her protective gloves creaked happily. Instead of any of the normal formalities, the training master simply asked   
“are you ready?”

Gwyn moved her grip down the length of the staff. Instead of the half staff stance the knight used, hands spread wide at equal distances from the middle, she had her grip a quarter from the end. It was far from balanced, but that was the point. There was more reach to the quarter staff stance, and blows had more weight behind them. She responded,   
“Ready, m’lord” 

He changed his stance too then, not to match hers, but one she didn’t recognize. He held his staff in the middle, and held it out to the side, half of it behind him. It looked suspiciously open. But she also saw how he could strike quickly, snapping it forward using the leverage of the staff against the back of his ribs.   
“Begin”  
she was moving forward before he finished. She lunged, thrusting the staff far forward, and extending her arm out long. Going for a long reach attack.  
Even expecting it, the snap of his staff almost tore hers from her grip, and while hers was rebounding back toward her and over to the side, his was snapping forward, closing her reach advantage. 

Gwyn caught the free end of her staff with her empty right hand, shifting her stance and dropping the staff from her left. She intercepted his jab, letting the weight of the attack flow down her staff, sliding hers under his, keeping contact like she was sharpening her staff on his. She saw his hands change to make another attack, a sweep or flip maybe. She forestalled that by grabbing his staff with her now empty left hand. She found the leverage point she wanted along her staff, and punched her staff-filled right hand towards his shoulder. It was a move Coren had taught her that summer. And it was as far from the honorable fighting form they taught the pages here as one could get without pulling out a knife during a sparring match. 

She could feel her mouth stretched wide in a grin. It got wider and toothier as the training master used her grip holding his staff in place against her, shoving her away so the punch fell softly, not with a crack.

She expected a respite, or something similar where they would talk about the exchange, or he would scold her. Instead, his staff became a blur, continuing the fight. She felt like her blood was bubbling. This didn’t seem to be instruction, but a nice fight. Instead of having pre set forms to go through and check off, it seemed to be a liquid flow. As different from the fighting Gwyn had done in page training as Bastion’s trigonometry was from sums. Sir haMinch was a storm, cracking staffs were thunder claps, and the hits he scored dull lightning. She didn’t let up, though. The best part about staff fighting was that a defense could become an attack instantly, and she put an attacking edge on every defense she could. 

She planted her staff to the side and rested her weight on it to stop a blow to her ribs, and before he could use the rebound to attack her other side, she heaved and kicked up at his elbow. It hit, delaying his next attack long enough for her to move forward and un plant her staff. She whipped it around his toward his head. He ducked out of the way and she noticed water that flew off the free end of her staff. She had been so focused on the sparring match she had forgotten where they were located. The moment of hesitation that caused her was a mistake. The larger knight was also moving forward, using his ducking motion to move inside her guard. He swept a leg from her and shoved. She could either fall into the lake, or stumble into it. In the end, she did a mix of both, turning to plant a in the lake to keep her torso out of it. She spun the staff above her blindly, trying to keep the knight back as she got her feet back under her. 

One boot was full of lake water, one gauntlet soaked, and the other leg was wet from mid thigh down where she had taken a knee in the mucky water. 

Gwyn struggled through the second bout. Her waterlogged legs felt like they would melt.

And the cursed knight would barely let her a foot away from the waters edge. He seemed more intent on herding her into the water than on scoring hits. He still scored more hits than she did. Though often desperation at hearing her foot splash would succeed in a solid blow.

When the castle bell tolled the hour, the training master called "That's enough for today."

Gwyn's breath was ragged, everything lower than her hips was soaked through from splashes, despite only ever being ankle deep in the water.

Her ears still rang from the blows her helmet took, and she never loved greaves as much as she loved them after this fight. Sir haMinch sneaked in leg blows like an assassin sneaked poison.

He instructed that the gear she had used was hers to look after, and she should bring it to the lake docks tomorrow after supper.

Gwyn managed a bow and the proper responses. The thought of having to fight in or near water like this again tomorrow made her stomach turn. She managed to keep her lunch though. After all, she hadn’t thrown up or fainted. Maybe she really could get over this phobia.

\---

She made her way to her rooms, stripped and scrubbed at the lake stink with a wet towel and lavender soap.  
She set the padded leggings in a tub of soapy water to soak out the smell. Then attacked the leather coat, grieves, bracers and helmet with cleaning oil and metal polish.  
The staff only needed a simple wipe down, the sparring hadn't damaged the wood anywhere.  
Those chores seen to, Gwyn gathered her books and headed to the library. She felt her lip quiver in overwhelmed relief when she smelled coffee, and saw a place waiting for her by Bastion and Third.  
They all wanted to hear about it, but Gwyn only had eyes for the spicy, strong beverage.

"It wasn't much," She finally shared, "just some sparring by the lake. Tiring more than difficult. And smelly." Gwyn shivered and buried her nose into her cup to chase away the remembered green rotting fish smell of the lake.

"I can give you a more exciting report, but first I need to catch up on class work. Does anyone have notes they don't mind sharing?"


	21. In Which Things Are Not So Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwyn, Ivan, Bexy, Sir haMinch, Bastion

The next day was worse. She had fallen asleep at her desk in her rooms, and then woken up when she actually fell from the desk onto the floor. She wrote a note to Bexy asking for a padded chair with arms and a high back when she leveled herself back to the desk.   
She woke up when the morning bell called. It was the longest she had slept in for at least a year.  
"Why didn't you wake me?" She grumbled to Bexy as she brushed teeth and got dressed  
"I tried, my lady, but you weren't having any of it. Princess Pumkin puff seemed to agree with you. Growing bodies need sleep too, you know."   
"I can sleep when I'm older. I didn't even finish reading this account of the court case that I need to."  
"Have some coffee before the case puts you to sleep again. And wake up those muscles of yours. Your brain will work better once you do."

Gwyn's muscles protested. Especially her neck and shoulders. The coffee did help motivate her, and after some pushups, lunges, dips and sit ups, she did feel a bit more like herself.  
There wasn't time before breakfast to read though, so she brought the case down with her to breakfast.  
Bastion seemed comforted seeing her nose in a book at breakfast. He pulled out a book of his own, and they read side by side, occasionally passing carafes of juice or baskets of toast to each other.  
Gwyn half expected a reprimand for having a book at the dining table. HaMinch was more distracted dressing down a group of pages that had been late to arrive.

Weapons practice was bearable, but left her feeling drained. At archery, Gwyn ended that lesson happy she hadn't shot herself in the foot.  
Finally came the cursed lake. This time she was to detail the southern coast.  
The heron studied her still, confused why she wasn't fishing. But even the pretty bird didn't cheer her cataloging of all the stinking weeds and reeds.

At lunch Gwyn covertly wrote out a skeletons coverage of the court case she had read at breakfast. After the meal she handed sir haMinch his report on the west coast of the lake from yesterday.  
In afternoon classes, she fell asleep during each and every one. It was like once she stopped moving, her mind and body went limp.

She received written warnings on most of her class work. She needed to improve or face punishment work.  
Gwyn knew it was a blessing the teachers had only issued warnings.  
Dinner tasted like soggy sawdust. She almost fell asleep again but her friends wanted to talk to her.  
Gwyn marched to the lakes small docks with regret and resentment.

How could this be worth it? How on earth could she keep on doing this for months?   
She let out her frustration in the sparring match. It became evident even through her stubborn resentment that frustration got her nowhere in these sparring matches. Sir haMinch just herded her easily into the lake when she got wild and angry.

The rest of the week crawled by. Her friends had to force her to eat most meals, and sleep was something she avoided. Her hands would tremor and her eyes were almost always bloodshot with dark under circles.  
Bastion shoved a peeled orange under her nose at breakfast, 

"Gwyn, you are not taking care of yourself. Please stop that. Ask for help. There's no shame in it." 

The orange was too sweet, and too sour, but she ate mechanically.  
"I’m not going to a healer. There's nothing wrong with me except sleep deprivation."

"You told me you have a meeting with the Lord provost tomorrow. How are you going to be able to help him with those eyes and those hands? You're already behind in all your classes, just sleep this afternoon. You know me and the lads will cover for you."

Gwyn rubbed her eyes under her glasses.  
"That sounds good, but even when I fall asleep, I don't stay that way long."

"It's all this coffee you drink. If you laid off it..."

Gwyn clutched her mug protectively, "It's not the coffee. It's the lake."/If only I could fight the lake like I can fight anything else./

"Then tell my lord haMinch. Everyone can see how badly this is affecting you."

"I just need to get over this thing I have about water. He's trying to help me. I think it's working.” 

"Only cause you're too exhausted!" The boys eyebrows formed one stern line, "fine, If you won't do it for yourself, do it for me. I've had a terrible week too, but I can't go to my sponsor for help, cause she looks like death warmed over."

Gwyn's stomach turned over, and she started shedding a flakey roll,   
"what kind of problems, kurt?" 

He shook his head, "normal beginner page ones. Plus I'm looking after my sponsor same as I looked after my forgetful grandmama."

Gwyn winced and sighed. "I'll, I'll actually lay down and court sleep at lights out. Ok?"

"And finish what's on your plate. By eating it" He clarified sternly and batted the remenients of the roll from her hand, "Stop wasting food. And start coming back to study group in the evenings. We've missed you."

"I'm not really fit for company after.." She trailed off.

"You're not fit for company at all lately. We still miss you. Stop wallowing. You're a royal page, dang it. Stop taking that for granted. I had to work so hard to get here."

Gwyn rested a hand on his sharp, permanently tense shoulders, 

"Alright papa. I'll be good. Or try to."

While she practiced hand to hand and weapons combat, Gwyn thought.   
Will all the trouble her class work was giving her, weapons training seemed like a breeze. With the notable exception of archery, she out-performed the other pages with ease.

The time came for swimming practice. The beginners had joined the larger group by now, and they were learning some new swimming style. Gwyn was to patrol the east side of the lake, where the narrow dock stretched out. 

Gwyn eyed the dock as she made like she was studying the plants. It lead far out into enemy territory, past the outer defences of the shallows. Those would slow down someone who wanted to attack the lake. but this dock was like an open gate into the guarded part of the palace. If there really was something malicious in the lake, and that feeling of dread she got wasn’t just from her own phobia, the dock would be the place she could sneak up on it from. She worried a little that there didn’t seem to be a part of her that didn’t think this was absolutely nuts. Shouldn’t she feel apprehensive or foolish about attacking a lake? But even when she was looking for objections to her half baked plan, she couldn’t find any within herself. 

Once the pages seemed to be in the rhythm of practice, she made her move.

She raced down the dock and threw herself into the deepest part of the lake she could reach. Her lungs felt too full of air for comfort, but she figured that was a passing concern. 

Once under water, completely surrounded by the enemy and vulnerable to attack, she touched bottom and started half wadeing, half crawling along the lake bottom. 

Weeds were plentiful down here, and the fish seemed very curious about her. She ignored both and looked around, moving deeper. If there was anything to really fear, anything behind the animosity she felt in the water of the lake, she wanted to find it. Either the water was harmless and she was just crazy and a coward, or there was something she was sensing that no one else did. Her lungs throbbed, but she pushed on. There had to be something. A monster, a demon, a God, something. She felt pressure from her back and looked over her shoulder. Leo was swimming toward her, legs kicking him along easily. He grabbed the back of her practice shirt and started to heave her up from the lake bottom. She raised up her arms and let the shirt come off. Just in breeches and the thick bra she wore for practice, she worked forward again, crouching to grab rocks with her hands to pull her along.

Her ears were roaring, her throat wanted to turn inside out to get some air. But Gwyn felt close.

Her hands felt something textured under the silt of the lake bottom. She grabbed it and yelped. It was sharp. The bubble of air that came out from her yell and the cloud of sand and grit made it hard to see. But she felt confident that this is what she had wanted to find. It didn't feel like something normal to a lake. 

A hand grabbed the back of her neck and the side of her breeches.

Water rushed into Gwyn's nostrils and she punched out with one hand at the thing that had her. This has gotta be the guardian, or the god of the lake, something that would be punishing her for trying to get at its vulnerabilities. She remembered her lessons about crocodiles and alligators, and tried to roll the attacker to disorient it and get at its vulnerabilities.

It felt and looked like sir haMinch, not like some water monster. He didn’t seem impressed by Gwyn’s half drowned crocodile roll, and grabbed her more firmly under the arm.

Gwyn's ears popped and felt water press against her face hard from the speed of the ascent. She broke the surface gagging and coughing up water. 

Sir haMinch towed her over to the shallows. She clutched at the thing she had grabbed, but was too blind from water dripping into her face and clouding her glasses to get a look at it. It felt long and heavy, but ungainly balanced and sharp. Not like any weapon or thing she had seen around the lake before. It was also slimy from algae. Despite the slipperiness, it had enough bumps and points to it that getting a good hold on it was easy.

Sir haMinch stood her up in the shallows and clapped Gwyn on the back till she stopped coughing. Once she managed a "I'm fine" He took her by both shoulders and shook her,   
"What in Mithro's name were you thinking! If you wanted to die, you should have gone on home and drowned in the ocean, you idiot chit! I ought to hang you off the wall by your ankles, maybe then the blood rushing to your head would generate a spark of sense in your fool head! How dare you do such a stunt under my watch!"

His voice was loud, but Gwyn felt like she had a buckets worth of water in her ears. She muttered "Yes sir" and "no sir" in response to his yells, insults and threats. Meanwhile she shook her own head, trying to knock water out of her ears, and wiping in vein at the lenses of her glasses.

Shouts and swearing from elsewhere distracted the infuriated knight. He kept a vice grip on one of her shoulders, half keeping her prisoner, half keeping her upright. Gwyn turned to look at the lake when he did. The lake was roiling, thick waves crashed against the beach where they stood. Something, some /thing/ big rose out of the center of the lake, and up, and up. The water level dropped significantly, no longer displaced.

Gwyn collapsed out of the Knights grip. She couldn't get her breath. There had been something in the lake. Something huge and terrible.


	22. In Which Gwyn Finds a Key

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwyn, Leo, haMinch, King Jonathan, Daine, Numair, Lady Allana, Lindvurm

The form split into three long necks, each topped with a stranger head. One was vaguely human, but with a large spiny fin on each side of its face. Each fin stretched from temple to jaw, made up of a dark blue membrane stretched over silver delicate spines. Another face was like a cat's skull, but covered with light blue scales like a frozen lizard. The third head sported a bone white beak, hooked viciously like the parrots in the menagerie. Instead of feathers it too had leathery scales. 

All 6 eyes were bright silver, as we're the teeth of the cat and humanoid face.

All 3 heads were focused on where Gwyn sat in soggy sand. Sir haMinch was calling orders and stepped in front of Gwyn protectively.

Gwyn realized she was giggling madly.

She explained her laughter to the air around her,   
"Don't be afraid of the lake, Gwyn. It's just water, Gwyn. You've got nothing to fear in bodies of water, Gwyn. Nothing in them will get you worse than your fear of water will get you. It's just the palace lake, Gwyn. Nothing scary could ever be in there"

She dissolved into more historical giggles. Someone, a large ill-defined shape with water still covering her glasses, had given sir haMinch something shaped like a spear, and then lifted Gwyn up under the shoulders, 

"C’mon then, you mad wench" it was Leo's voice. 

The monsters cat like head opened its mouth to reveal needle sharp teeth and made a horrid noise that went on and on. The facial features bunched and writhed under the leathery scales, and a broad flat cat's tongue flapped inside the mouth.

Belatedly Gwyn's mind translated the crashing and sloshing noises into words

"Thieef. Giive baack yooon statute oor suuffeeer." 

"I'm not afraid of suffering, but I'm no thief!" Gwyn shook out of Leo's grip  
"I found it unguarded, unmarked in the lake bottom. My blood is on it."

A hot hand clamped on the back of her neck,   
"Page, shut your mouth. Diane and Numair are on their way to talk this out. Do. Not. Provoke this creature. Not with the other pages around."   
Gwyn hissed back peevishly at the training master,   
“Like you pointing that spear at it isn’t provoking”

The knight snarled,  
“Page Leo, get her out of here”   
The taller page tugged Gwyn back to comply. But then the creature in the lake shrieked, hissed and cried out at the same time. Gwyn saw the other pages around make the sign against evil on their wet chests. 

“Thoou maay fleee, but thoou wiill neeveer eeescaapee mee, thiieef! I, Lindvurm, biid theee leeave uus, lesst thoou bee ((yeah, long vowels, ok)) punished for harboring yon thief.” the human head swiveled to look at the pages and two knights. The cat’s head never let Gwyn out of its sight. 

Sir haMinch lifted up his spear in a guard position well above his head,   
“The accused is but a child. I beg you allow the caretakers and guardians of the accused deal with her, and parlay with you, Lindvurm”

Leo muscled Gwyn back two more steps till Gwyn dug in her heels again. Instead of forcing her further, Leo shoved a soggy mess of cloth at Gwyn. She recognized her training yard shirt, and awkwardly put it on. Wincing at how disgusting the cold wet cloth stretched and clung onto her.   
"I parlay not with common bloods. This is the palace I have guarded long. Bring me the king or queen that has survived the ordeal of royalty, or leave me to my justice.”

A large golden eagle plummeted down and back winged mightily as she landed. Daine’s head morphed onto the eagle’s body. The creature’s bird head cocked to the side and dipped down, level to the ground to inspect Daine in her strange form.   
The humanoid head nodded politely at her,   
“Long has it been since a demigod has walked the palace. Esteemed as your blood is, you will not sway me. I answer not to anyone but the crowned ruler of Tortall.”

Daine answered, “I'll fetch him, begging your pardon. Please, I know the king well, and he would not be pleased if you harmed any under his care without his leave.”

“The thief must not leave. The ruler with royal blood proved by the chamber must arrive. I will not make deals or concessions with anyone else.”

Daine made assurances that the king was on his way and flew off again. Gwyn saw Numair arrive, along with tkaa, the basilisk teacher at the palace. Feeling fairly sure she wasn’t about to be killed just then, Gwyn turned her attention at what she had gotten from the lake bottom that the three headed creature was yelling about. 

It was a hideous statue made of a strange dark material. Deformed, or perhaps formed after a horrible fashion. What looked to be a squid or octopus, but with far too many tentacle of various lengths, made the head. It was topped with warped horns. The head was situated on top of a seated animal form, with thick slabs of muscle and hooved hind feet like a bull or bison. The forearms ended in many fingered talons. On the creature’s back were half furled bat wings. Each talon, horn, tentacle and point of the wing was needle sharp. A talon and a wingtip were still embedded in Gwyn’s left hand. She carefully removed her hand to avoid further scratches.   
At the base of the statue, a long handle was attached. It looked to be made of multiple metals and even gems in an ornate style. Most of the detail was lost in a thick coating of grime and silt. The handle resembled the grip of a chalice, wide on each end, but much larger and thicker. It was two of Gwyn’s hand lengths long at the narrowest part, and even that was larger than her thumb and forefinger could circle around. 

It was so ungainly and strange. Gwyn for a moment wasn’t sure if it was worth keeping, wasn’t worth finding to prove her fear to others. She stood and would have thrown it back to the tri-headed creature. But the king and queen had arrived and were standing in front of her. They looked majestic, as usual, the king, several times a grandparent at this point still looked hale and commanding. The white at his temples seemed a natural continuation of his crown, not a sign of age. 

The creature was fascinated by him. Even the hunting gaze of the cat skull head had turned to look at him. All three heads were stretched out to be close to him. As they moved forward, so to did the huge body of the creature, this Lindvurm. It was thick with snake like muscle, the dark blue, sky blue, and bone white of the three heads continued and were scattered down it’s hide. 

“Tortall has done well to produce you. The evidence of your expansive rule hangs upon you. I felt the magic of the Bazhir. I felt the magic of the Dominion Jewel. I felt the stirring of the Islander’s Gods in the palace. Never did I think all three would house themselves in one ruler. But I see you lack the territory of the north, the mountains of the east, and the continent to the south. Still, quite impressive, my king. Even if you are a Conte, and not of the line that I first served.” 

The three heads bowed low. And King Jonathan bowed in response.   
“Our records do not mention you, great one. Please enlighten us and explain what has angered you”

“As I told these common blooded servants thou surround thyself with, I am the Lindvurm. I guard what I have been given. I have slept these many centuries. I slept through the small and inelegant castle you now live in being built. After my first master’s castle was demolished, I crafted this lake to keep myself undisturbed during the construction and warring.  
“Through the centuries, less and less was given to me to be guarded. I assumed this meant Tortall had fallen, to my despair. With the rapid influx of magics over this past half century, I assumed war had finally torn the dredges of my country apart. Happy I am to see I was incorrect.”

The king made a gracious nod.   
"It is my goal to unify my country by embracing the unique differences of all my people. I welcome their knowledge and culture into my court.”

The Lindvurm snorted in a terrifying noise.   
“What strangeness. You have the power to make all bow to your will. All see your power and know they do well to serve and obey you. Weakening yourself to their level is the diplomat’s way. Not the way of the ruler and monarch.”

“Perhaps when you last were awake this was the way. Our people and Our royal line flourish from Our methods in ruling Tortal. We have grown wise and strong from Our efforts. We appreciate your council, and will seek more in the future if it please you, and if it serves Us.” King Jonathan was in full haughty monarch mode. And the Lindvurm seemed to approve. 

“What has awoken you this day, Lindvurm? Why do We see you threatening Our subjects?”

“My king,” the heads dipped and exposed throats in supplication, “Someone has sneaked into thy palace and stolen from thy lands. That child there, holding the key charged to me.”

The king half turned and waved at Gwyn to rise. She tried to, but her legs were half asleep. Small hard hands got under her elbows and heaved her up. Lady Alanna kept a hand on Gwyn’s shoulder.   
/Well now,/ Gwyn thought, /even if I do get fed to a sea monster, I'll have been held by the first and finest lady knight in history./  
The lady knight had skin like well tanned leather. Crows feet at amethyst eyes and parenthesis by her mouth just seemed like so much embroidery. Her loosely curling hair was a mix of copper and silver. Gwyn wasn’t sure if she had seen anyone so amazing. 

Gwyn turned back to the king, not hiding the buoyant smile being so close to the king’s champion gave her. “Yes, your majesty?” 

“Tell us how you came to have this...” he looked at the massive and hideous statue in her hands, “Key.”

Gwyn bowed low and held it for a long moment,  
"I went to the bottom of the lake, sire, I found it at the lake bed when it pricked my hand and made me bleed. I had no knowledge of it being guarded. It was as loose as the weeds and moss”

The Lindvurm made upset noises at this. Gwyn wasn’t even sure how to process them as noise. It was deep and booming and high and shrill all at once. 

The king turned back at the Lindvurm,   
“Please enlighten us how you came to guard this key, and if objects you guard often find their way to the lake bottom.”

The cat head hissed while the bird head clattered its beak.   
“As you bid, majesty. But a short while past, does my liege remember when the dominion jewel was brought to the palace?”

King Jonathan nodded and gestured to Lady Alanna,   
“Yes, my champion, the lady knight Alanna, brought me the dominion jewel shortly before my coronation.”

The Lindvurm seemed surprised,   
“This is your champion? She shows a resemblance to the legend of the Burning Brightly one.” The cat skull head pressed close to alana, seeming to sniff. Before the short tempered knight could respond, the cat seemed to sneeze.   
“Yes. Yes, perhaps there is merit to your philosophy, my liege. For you are the Night One, and together you and the Burning bright one vanquished the last of the Ysandir demon race. Quite impressive. So much happening in so short a time. Very well.”   
The heads nodded seeming contented, “This key came to me a short while past indeed, to be within a mortal lifetime. Shortly before the coronation, the twice-lived sorcerer threw this key into the lake I surround myself with. This key was used to attack the earth by the twice-lived sorcerer” 

Gwyn winced as Lady Alanna’s hand dug into her arm with bruising force.   
“Rodger? Rodger threw this to you? That foul-”   
“Alanna” The king interrupted warningly

Gwyn was close enough to hear the rest of the champion’s muttered cursing. She learned quite a few new words and sayings that way. 

"I knew not this sorcerer's ends, but I kept the key with me, far below the lake. Less than a heartbeat ago, a god-touched magic bid its release, along with other guarded objects of mine. It would have been retrieved in time. But a thief stole it.”

“Sire” Lady Alanna hissed, "If Rodger wanted to dispose of it, even if he didn’t know of the Lindvurm, we should study it. That crystal sword of his isn’t the last of his work I've found. Some of it is still dangerous”

The king held up a hand to his champion,  
“You mentioned god-touched magic released this key from your guardianship before the page in my service retrieved this key from the lake bottom. Please explain what you meant by this?”

“As if you do not know. The Night One and the Burning Brightly one defeated the Ysandir with god-touched magic. The One of the Bazhir speaks to all Bazhir with god-touched magic. The dominion jewel was created by such magic. The Burning Brightly one that you wisely chose as your champion in your realm is still touched by the gods. And of course the Chamber of the Ordeal is imbued with such magic.” there were murmurs from the crowd at the mention of the chamber. 

/Maybe this is a way to could explain the Graveyard Hag’s involvement without having to choke and gag every time I try to talk about it,/ Gwyn thought. 

She slipped from Leo's warm hand and dodged past sir haMinch.   
“Please excuse me, your majesty, great Lindvurm, may I be permitted to speak” the Lindvurm’s bird head let out a shrieking caw and darted forward, towards the arm Gwyn held the statue in. a glimmering shield of sapphire blue came up around her as the king raised a hand in placation. 

The bird head stopped short gracefully, scintillating on the long neck that supported it. The beak opened and closed around a wormlike blue tongue. 

“As king, we give you permission under these novel circumstances. We know from your service you would not interrupt us without great need.”

Gwyn bowed low, her head bonking gently against the blue magic shield. 

“Your Majesty, great Lindvurm, I believe the statue has been taken from the fierce guardianship by the same incident your majesty had me attend a meeting about this last Monday. The mention of g-” she couldn’t finish as she gagged and coughed wetly. It had felt like a slimy furry rat had tried to claw down her throat. Shuddering, Gwyn took a knee and fought for her voice again,   
"I don’t say this to pass blame, your majesty. But to illuminate. There may be a larger reason this has come to pass that we are yet blind to.”

The King considered, seeming to weigh everything. Gwyn felt terribly vulnerable in that weighing moment, like nothing would be held back from this king’s judgement.   
“Explain to me what you were doing at the bottom of the lake.”

Gwyn took a breath, at least now she doubted she would be gagged by phantom rats answering this question.   
“I've a mighty aversion to water, your majesty. Anything more than a basin of it… I come over with fear. Larger bodies of water, rivers, lakes, the.. the seas. I, I always feel.. I mean to say, I am fearful of something malevolent about the water. As though it waits to do me harm, or resents my presence. I feel rather ashamed and foolish of this fear, your Majesty. Especially now that it is interfering so much with my training as a page to become a knight in service to the realm. I.. I got rather fed up of feeling afraid. I thought perhaps tackling the problem head on would resolve something for me. Maybe I would,” Gwyn huffed to cover a maniacal giggle ”Perhaps I would find that which resented me in the water and find something to conquer. Perhaps I wouldn’t find anything but rocks and fish and abate my fear some. Perhaps the lake would best me and I would be proven unfit for training. I didn’t expect to find this statue, or disturb any guardians. I didn’t know there was a guardian in truth. Even my fear and aversion to water didn’t dream up this reality. Because the fear is attached to all large bodies of water, not just this lake.”

There was another lengthy period of consideration from the king.   
“Lindvurm, you have shown a great knowledge of the magics that touch people, is there any such magic about this page you have accused a thief?”

With a wave, the king dismissed his shield before the Lindvurm could say anything. Gwyn supposed a new shield could get called up if the Lindvurm felt like chomping her arm off. 

Gracefully, the bird head lowered further, the nostrils on the top of the beak worked for a second and then gently the Lindvurm’s bird head eased forward and clasped Gwyn’s shoulder. The breath filled Gwyn’s sinuses and made her eyes water. It was a smell sharp and cloying like sulfur or menthol, but neither of those. It smelled more like crisp air in winter, and the still air deep below the castle in the catacombs. Gwyn fought off a sneeze. The beak gently held her in place while the bulbous bird tongue touched her wet shirt and the side of her neck softly. Gwyn primed herself to welcome and harness the pain if it bit into her chest and back with that viciously hooked beak. 

Instead, the head huffed a burst of that strong breath and released her. Gwyn’s eyes were watering freely now. There was a small burp noise and the bird head shook its head, blinking rapidly.

The three heads turned toward each other and the crashing surf-like voice dissolved from common into something more like a waterfall muttering to itself. 

Gwyn had enough time to carefully check herself for damages and rub out the strange feeling of the tongue on her neck. Her shirt had been pierced, but the small pricks on her chest weren’t even bleeding. 

The heads turned to address King Jonathan, and the human head said, “yes. Like the burning brightly one, but another god. The demi godling also has an odor of that god's stink, but not as deeply permeated. A royal decree could free my reservations to speak further, but would also raise ire. It is best left alone.  
“I cannot abide an object leaving my guardianship unawares, but my liege has the right of it. This stinks of divine planning. I do not recend my accusation of thievery. Even the god-touched have a choice to follow the god’s bidding, unwitting or not. I desire the key back into my guardianship and this youngling to leave palace grounds, my liege.”

The king and the Lindvurm started to haggle. Gwyn suddenly felt exhausted. It seemed things were very much out of her hands. She sat on the surprisingly comfortable sand and tucked the statue between an arm and her body. There wasn’t a difference between laying down and passing out.

Gwyn woke, cold and clammy to the sound of Bexy arguing with someone.


	23. In Which Gwyn Avoids a Hospital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bexy, Ahmond, Bastion, Third, haMinch, Numair, Ulric, Vance of Fenrigh

"For the last time My lady does not wish to be removed to the infirmary! Do you think I could be handmaid to the last scion of house Haryse and not understand my mistress's wishes? Do you think I'm just some jump start milk maid that's never seen a palace before? I swear, once she's up I'm gonna have her sign a letter to convince know it all healers who think they know what's best for everyone that /I am/ the one to know what is best for my mistress when she is passed out cold!"

Bexy drew in a tense breath for emphasis, but Gwyn interrupted anything further,   
"If you write that up, I'll sign it with Mithran priests to witness." 

 

Triumphantly, her maid pointed at Gwyn, "there, you see?"

Gwyn sat up, and got a long scratch from the strange statue down on arm. So she still had that. And she hadn't gotten dumped in a carriage for fief Haryse yet. That's good.

She looked around and saw Numair studying the now empty looking lake, a team of people in healer robes carrying an empty litter, and Bexy with Gwyn's heavy quilted sleeping robe and a canteen of water.

Stiffly, Gwyn hoisted herself to her feet and addressed the resentful looking healers,   
"I will report to the infirmary if I need it. Right now, I just need cleaned up and some answers. I'm not hurt."

"You're bleeding" a battle ax of a lady pointed out.

"Just a scratch. It will get cleaned and set to rights in the bath." To make sure this didn't turn into a discussion, Gwyn turned and left toward the pages baths.

\---  
Inside she scrubbed with a hot cloth and soap till she was red all over. A couple buckets full of water rinsed that all off. 

She eyed the open pool and cautiously approached the edge. She had hoped that some of her apprehension about water would have gone away. She wasn't sure now, looking at the slightly streaming water, if it had. It seemed a touch more manageable now. As if she had gotten bigger now, rather than the fear getting smaller.  
Slowly she sat at the edge and dipped a toe in. It didn't fall off or start dissolving. She told herself that was a good sign.

She lowered the rest of the leg in and swished it in a small circle.  
She could clearly see there was no danger. She clearly knew all her worry and fear was just in her head. And yet, she just as clearly felt the skin down her neck crawl. While she knew there was no such thing, she also knew that if there were creatures made of water, she wouldn't be able to see them as they grabbed her leg.  
With a kick and a shudder, she got her leg out of the water and crawled backwards from the edge of the pool.  
To get her composure back, Gwyn soaped down again, this time with a nice lavender scented soap. She massaged in circles rather than scrapping and scrubbing.

After the bath, Gwyn scooped up the statue ‘key’. She made sure all the sharp points didn't damage her current set of clothes. After that, she wasn't sure what to do. She got out the bath house and went walking. She had a feeling that if she went to her room, things would get overwhelming, and she wouldn't get anything done. 

She went on a stroll through the pages wing, expecting to find her classmates somewhere. But there didn't seem to be any classes going on this afternoon. Maybe she could actually catch up on class work.

She found her friends at the library. They swarmed her with questions. Most wanted to see the statue. Ahmond surprised Gwyn by putting a halt to that.   
"It is not a trinket to play with. It's a magical artifact that called to our lady page here. Leave her special magic beacon alone, everyone. Besides, it gives me the willies. I do not like it."  
He seemed to forget about everyone in the room, his lips pressed in a thin line. The expression seemed to age him. Suddenly there was a thin small ancestor in the room.   
"I pray that if the gods brought it into our lives, there was a reason that will lead us all into a better future." 

Gwyn reached out her free hand,   
"Hey man. Sorry, it kinda freaks me out too. I'm just not sure what to do with it. But I can get it to my rooms. Plus I need to get my class work soon. We can all swap stories in a minute." 

In her rooms, Gwyn set 3 different wards and a sight shield on the statue. After that, she stashed it in the bag she kept her small clothes and menstrual products in.

The class work and the huge list of assignments to finish came back with her to the library.  
At the end of the afternoon, Gwyn was feeling really good about all the work she had gotten done.

She made herself eat a big dinner for Bastion's sake.   
"Bastion, could I commission you to make a few sketches of that statue thing? I want to ask some priests about it tomorrow, but don't really want to lug around."

He seemed to get stiffer in the shoulders,   
"I'm not... sketching is a lady's art. Not one for knights." 

Gwyn choked on her spiced rice and coughed until she could laugh freely,  
"I'll give you a minute to think over what you said. Oh man, where did you hear that? I've seen your notes. They're fill of really good illustrations and diagrams."

He brushed back his long bangs, "my.. dad and uncle. And cousins."

"Well, let me know if I see them. I will show them a delicate ladylike time in the sparring courts. If they can beat me, maybe I'll think they have something there."

"Talking big, page Gwyn," Vance of Fenrigh, one of the 3rd year pages, quipped. 

"Come at me bro, I'll bet my pretty, pretty earrings I can beat you in the practice courts in a sparring match"  
"That will make a great winter's night gift for my little sister, you're on"   
Gwyn and he grasped for arms over the table, each with wolfish grins. When he went to break the grip, Gwyn held on hard.   
"What do I get when I win?" 

He tried to reestablish his grip to match hers, but she buckled down. Ligaments and muscles moved under her grip,   
"Mithros, ok, you can have my hunting horn. It's tauron horn" Gwyn let go, 

"Excellent. It's a bet. Tomorrow morning before temple?"

"Sure. Damn it woman, this is gonna bruise."

Gwyn just chuckled her gravelliest chuckle and sat back down.  
"So, anyway Bastion, you certainly don't need to. But I would pay you for the trouble."

"No need for that. It's no trouble."  
\---

Dinner done, Gwyn changed again into practice clothes and set out to the lake for sparring with Sir haMinch.  
Today was different with sword and shield and the sparring took place on the dock over the water instead of on the shore.  
It went as the whole week had gone. In some ways, the docks was an easier ground for her, but when haMinch pushed her to the edge and she had to think fast or get dumped in the water, it was much harder.

The worst though was when he tripped her up and she landed face down on the docks. She could see the water between the slats in the wooden structure.

Suddenly the gaps seemed meters across, and the slats were insubstantial toothpicks. All feeling of security vanished. The terror of a wave surging up under her and washing her away, or the whole structure crumbling and dumping her into water who knows how deep gripped her and shook her.

Fighting Instincts screamed at her to prepare for the knight's attack. She needed to move. Too late, she got a knee under her just in time to get a solid blow up into her armpit, rolling her over to face the sky and her opponent.

She lunged up with her shield, unsure where her sword had gotten to. For a while she fought only with her shield. HaMinch had it behind him, and was guarding it from her. It felt surprisingly natural to fight with the shield. It was heavy and dense, turning it edgewise toward the attacker made for hard punches and sweeps. And it kept her other hand free for grabs and strikes.

Gwyn let herself enjoy the feeling of the fight. She certainly would have lost a real fight many times over, but the sparring didn't worry about emulating real fights. Hits were taken and given without worrying about winners or losers. She just kept moving, getting better at adapting to her new weapon. She ignored going for her sword even when she could have.

The novelty of the shield as a weapon kept her mind off the water, and the tiny barrier keeping her out of it.  
The bell rang the hour and end of the sparring match.

Gwyn gratefully ran off the docks and almost collided with someone.  
Numair and a couple of her page friends were in the process of standing up.

Her friends grinned at her and clapped,   
"Good show, auntie!" teased Third

"What are all of you doing here? Don't tell me watching me freeze up or get pummeled in turns is fun."

"We saw Numair out here," said Ulric, "and figured it would be as good a place as any to study."

"You fight like a warhorse" Ahmond was beaming. He clapped a hand to her shoulder.

"Uh, thanks?" She gently punched his chest and turned to Numair, "Master Numair, would it be acceptable if I cleaned my equipment and washed up before meeting with you?"

"Hm? Oh yes, come back here as soon as you can" He didn't look up from the papers he was adding notes to.

A clean uniform was waiting for her in the bath house. Gwyn sent blessings to Bexy and all the other servents.

Numair had relocated to the docks and sat back down with his folio of papers and portable writing desk. The other pages were still studying off the shore a ways. Gwyn felt rather stifled with the attention. But shoved the feeling away and decided she liked her friends showing solidarity the best they could.


	24. In Which there is Philosophy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cast: Gwyn, Numair, Bastion, Vance
> 
> content warning: description of dead bodies and rotting

Numair had relocated to the docks and sat back down with his folio of papers and portable writing desk. The other pages were still studying off the shore a ways. Gwyn felt rather stifled with the attention. But she shoved the feeling away and decided she liked her friends showing solidarity the best they could.

Numair sitting down was almost as tall as she was standing up. He gestured her to sit with a thin dark arm,   
"To begin, what can you tell me about this God touched magic? Have any gods made themselves apparent to you in visions, visits or dreams?"

Gwyn let out her breath and tried to seat herself more comfortably.  
"I'll try."

/Maybe if I do it in a round about fashion, I won't start choking./ She thought a good place to start would be reminding him of the black gods daughter, and her place of reverence in Carthak. But she heard herself say   
"when death occurs, the heart stops and the ears go cold. The body convulses and liquids build up in the throat. Between the buildup and the convulsions, death causes the body to produce a death rattle."

Gwyn frowned and stopped. "That's not what I meant to say. Sorry master Numair."

"Well, go ahead and try some more. Perhaps getting this line of thinking will help you cope." He seemed cautious and very curious.

/At the start of the immortals war, Numair and Daine had met emperor ozone, and he was said to have been a devotee to the graveyard hag. Maybe talking about the emperor would help./  
She tried again, "The brain dies when the body doesn't get any air, and so the rest of the body shuts down to follow. The body gets its death pallor and the pupils become glassy. The body feels cooler than normal."  
Gwyn broke off again, frustrated,

"Master Numair, I don't think this is going to work."

"I understand the frustration. These don't seem to be your words, or what you want to say, is that right?"

"Yes, that's correct. I don't know if I can give you even oblique answers."

"That's fine. Unless it harms you, I'd like you to continue. If anything, this information is rather useful. I haven't heard such a clinical breakdown like this. Just keep trying. Maybe something you want to say will break through." 

Gwyn sighed and scrubbed her head. Maybe being oblique and round about wasn't working. She should just tell him about seeing the graveyard hag in the temple of the black god.

"Within ten minutes, blood will pool," Gwyn broke off frustrated. She hissed through her teeth and focused on saying what she wanted. Her mouth worked and then continued, "causing discoloration at the points of the body closest to the ground. Muscles relax, and the body voids itself of dung and urine. The eyes start to cloud over. They also start to flatten or sag. Sag. Sag! dammit saaaag. Sa-ag."  
She held Numair's eyes and exaggerated the word. It rhymed with hag, maybe he would get the point. But it didn't last long. Her mouth worked again and then her voice came out hoarser,  
"The deepest parts of the brain expire at the end of this stage. The death is no longer reversible through mortal means."  
Gwyn sighed and rubbed a hand over her face.

"Can we just, meditate or something? Anything else? This is really uncomfortable and unsettling. I don't want to be saying any of that stuff."

"I would appreciate you trying just a bit more. I believe we are making progress, even if it doesn't seem that way to you."

Gwyn glared and stood. She paved back and forth. Gritting her teeth she thought about how the Hag had torn her ear and taunted her without letting the training master see what was going on. Gwyn spat in frustration and snarled,

"Fine, then, within 10 fucking hours, the body becomes rigid ok? The hair stands up and the skin sorta tightens so it looks like the hair is still fucking growing. The pooling blood I fucking mentioned earlier starts staining the skin black, alright? Around six hours after death the body can start twitching randomly! And eight hours after death, it starts getting fucking cold. You think that would be the end of it, but no! There's lots of gross things to come. After a day, the insides start to liquefy, and the body gets pliant again. That's why a lot of funerals are a day after death, so the fucking death attendants can more easily get the body in the fucking casket! But ya gotta hold the funeral before day 3, or else huge blisters form around every part of the fucking skin and blood foams out of the orifices from the body becoming a leather sack around a putrid mess!" 

She was earning concerned looks from Numair and her friends too. She felt so angry at the damn goddess. This damn lake. Numair for pushing her into keeping this ridiculous rant going.  
"But no, that's not the grossest part, or the messiest, we haven't even gotten to skin slippage yet. No, but next the body starts to bloat and stink of rot. The tongue swells, and that sticks out. And the face swells too, making it impossible to identify. Anything left in the bladder or ass get pushed out too. The blood rots which makes the skin go green.

"Then the teeth, nails and hair can fall out from a tremor or breeze, and the skin will slide off the body at a touch. Maggots and other insects love this stage. After that, the body either continues turning into goo and just leaves a skeleton, or it dries out and mummifies."

She turned to face the mage, hands on hips,   
"That's the service everyone gets. Babies, kings, traitors, heroes, loved ones, enemies, even immortals."

She panted and stared at him for a moment. He was taking notes of what that damn goddess was making her say. She wanted to strangle him and his damn intellectual curiosity.  
"You know what? Everyone thinks they are scared of death cause they won't be able to do anything anymore, but nope, everyone does lots and lots of stuff after their soul is gone wherever souls go to. This process is everyone's natural enemy, but we hide it from ourselves. It goes on in crypts and abandoned battlefields, in the oceans and underground everywhere. We ignore it as best we can and say "Oh, she died a noble death" or "at least he was with his family when he passed" No. We are not noble in death. There is no honor in rotting. There is no justice in a bloated corpse. People always die alone and disgusting. And I hate it.

"I hate how much I love fighting. I hate that I'm going to kill so many people in service to the crown and it's somehow good, just, and worse of all, expected."

Gwyn slowly sank to her haunches and then plopped onto her back to look up at the sky. Numair was blessedly silent. She only heard the scratch of writing from him.

"That last rant was all me. I meant to say it. It wasn't something else making me talk about death to cover up what I was trying to say like before." She admitted with a shaky breath

"I had thought so. You didn't seem surprised or worried about the words you were using." His voice was even and scholarly. 

She was surprised he had noticed. Maybe he really was paying attention to her, and not the words she had been puppeted into saying.  
"Numair, can I ask you something?"

"Feel free. I'm not going to retaliate you speaking your mind."

"It might be offensive. But. I gotta know. How... how can you kill people with your gift? How do you deal with setting someone on fire being just as easy as getting a fireplace going? A sword, it takes concentrated effort and skill to kill with. There's a weight of the weapon, the hours of practice. But with magic, the things that you practice can kill as easily as they can help make lives good. In studying to make lives good, you also develop the potential to kill, and there's nothing extra to it like there is extra to sword training."

The great mage put aside his writing utensils.   
"I have killed using my gift, but on the battlefield. Where I had to weigh the lives and safety and cause of my allies and country against the lives of others. I gain no happiness or pleasure or glory out of it. I do gain saving my wife from being shot, or people who would harm my daughters from taking over a fortress. I keep the soldiers of the king I respect and serve safe."  
His voice was solemn and came out slowly. Each word was weighed.

That was the expected answer. That warriors were supposed to disregard their own morals to save others.  
"I would believe that easier if you weren't Numair Samaline, the greatest mage we have on our side. Couldn't you put forth a different effort. Instead of using your gift to kill, use it to capture, to bind. Wouldn't creating a magic to contain enemy soldiers in a box of Magic be just as difficult as creating a magic to kill them? You, no, this isn't on you, you and I, mages, we could disable a group of soldiers just as well as we could kill soldiers."

After a few breaths, Numair answered in a measured and oddly gentle voice,   
"Binding and boxing in take precious time during a battle. More often than not, there isn't time needed for those workings to save an ally's life." 

Gwyn set her jaw and stood up to face him again. After a breath to gather herself, she knelt   
"Numair, I would be grateful if you can teach me and help me perfect any magics that would halt an enemy force without killing them. I know you are supposed to be working with me to figure out this God touched part of my magic. And I will help you as best I can with that. But I want to have more options than killing on the battlefield. Will you please help me in this, or direct me to someone who would?"

She heard him let out a long breath  
"I will help you workshop and practice non lethal spells. But I have my own goals for these meetings. You have a power that you can't control yet. Before either of us can be confident in your ability to not kill using magic, then you and I need to work on understanding that power. That is going to be my first priority, and I need your full cooperation."

Gwyn nodded. "That's acceptable. Thank you." 

She offered a hand to shake on the deal, and his hand engulfed hers in a firm grip

"Now then, about what you were saying before without meaning to, we're those facts things you knew beforehand, or were they new to you?"

Gwyn groaned and began to explain her experience tending to bodies in the temple of the black god when the bell marking the end of the hour struck.

He sighed in contemplation.  
"Please write out what you can to give me tomorrow, oh, no. On the first of the week. Tomorrow I expect you will be busy meeting with our Lord provost. And if you run into difficulties writing like you did in talking, I would be interested in having that noted and you writing whatever comes."

"Sure thing master Numair."

They stood and Gwyn walked quickly to the shore off of the docks. Numair kept up easily.  
"Oh and Gwyn, consider the difficulty in refraining from killing when using a knight's physical weapons as well as your gift in battle. Or, if that doesn't seem a difficulty, why that difference exists to you. I'm interested in your thoughts."

"Yes master Numair." 

\----

Gwyn tackled the rest of her class work in the her room with Bastian. the door stayed opened per protocol. Bastian sketched the statue in the window sill and chatted with her about life as a page so far.  
He told her that his family was only made part of the peerage when his dad created the post office.

"But that's a huge achievement! more than a lot of nobles have done. that's nothing to be humble about" Gwyn reassured.

He tapped his pen against the well of ink rapidly,  
"Well it is a far cry from being in the book of gold like you. and it's kind of easy for you to say that. You've got a duchess title waiting for you to turn 18."

“I have a story I will tell you about that, but first and more importantly: how can I help you when people give you trouble? I hope you know I'm happy to take people to task for you. but I can probably do other things you think are better suited. I haven't been the best sponsor so far, but I'm still here for you as a friend."

His stiff face was frowning at the wall, "I don't want you to get into fights because of me, if that's what your offering. I'm becoming a knight to stand up for people, not the have people stand up for me. if I do complain about people to you, it would help me best if you just listened. not get revenge for me behind my back, or offer to beat them up. just listen." 

He stirred the ink around, "that probably sounds cowardly and not valiant at all."

"You mean it sounds wise. I will. you don't have to worry about me picking fights on your account. though if I see you in a fight with someone else, I'm gonna want to end the fight. and that's not taking pity on you. that's saving my own reputation."

He snorted, "Ok. you're reputation as as brute is pretty important."

Gwyn grinned, "Damned right. can't let people know I hate the thought of killing and would rather be a desk knight."

Bastian's angular face rounded out in surprise, "Really? Pull the other one"

Gwyn grinned, "Yep. I know I'm probably going to kill someone as a knight, but I don't want to. as much as I love fighting, I hate the thought of killing someone. before I never had time for it training to be a knight, I would go to the black gods temple and work there. I'd lay out bodies, wash and clothe them, catalogue them, and get the ready for burial with the monks. I don't want to be someone responsible for creating a corpse."

"I" Bastian started slowly, "never would have imagined that. you always seem like some kind of war goddess pretending to be a child along with us when you train. well, unless you're given a bow to shoot."

Gwyn laughed at that jab, and he chuckled along.  
"It's true. I like fighting. I love all the physical stuff we do, except archery. but I really want someone like Duke Gareth to be my knight master. I want to make the kingdom better by changing policies and shifting tides of battle by strategy and proper supplies lines. That sort of stuff. Or better yet, avoiding wars all together. Then I can just beat heads in tournaments."

"You're a weird one."

"Thank you" Gwyn bowed from her seat and they shared another laugh.  
\--------

The next morning Gwyn got ready for her sparring match with Vance.

It ended up being pretty fun. Her work with sir haMinch made the 3rd year page seem slow and ungainly. He was her same age and roughly the same size, but he had two extra years of training on Gwyn. He was far better than her with sword technique. But since she was used to surviving sir haMinch, it was a much closer fight.  
Sweating and grinning after fifteen minutes, she shook hands with him. They had run out of time without either getting a clear victory, so called it a draw. 

During the pages’ visit to the temple district, Gwyn lingered entering the temple of Mithros, and managed to get in last. She immediately made her apologies and requested to go to the privy.   
Getting back out of the temple to the Golden God felt like a relief. She went and round the back of the Black God’s temple, and found a small shrine under a slanting lean-to. It was a common fixture, but the appearance changed from season to season. People who worshiped the Graveyard Hag in Tortall usually didn’t have much to offer. 

Gwyn shored up the lean-to and dusted inside with her handkerchief. She placed the dice back in place by the rat skull. Then fished in her pockets and found a small apple from breakfast.  
Gwyn ate it and left the core by the dice and skull.  
Cautiously, she tried speaking,  
"The graveyard hag visited me in the temple of the dark one and we prepared a person for burial. then she came to the palace and bullied me. She keeps me from talking to people about her visits"  
Gwyn let out a long breath and looked around.  
Nobody, not even an ominous shadow.

"Well at least I can say it. even if nobody's around."

She went back to the temple of Mithros, and mouthed along to the rote replies. She daydreamed about going to the divine realms and figuring out what made a God a god. How they worked and what their limits were. Why they even had limits if they were truly divine.


	25. In Which there is a Lord Provost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwyn, Detective Chisa Hazlewood, Lord Provost haMinch, Pen

Gwyn was given leave to stay outside the palace to take her lunch, and then report to the provost office at the Central City Guard Post.  
There wasn't actually that much time for lunch, so she grabbed a wrapped sandwich and a sweet pickle from a street vendor.

The Central Guard Office was a low squat building made of heavy bluish stone.   
The outside was crowded with wagons, carts, horses and officers clad in black and silver uniforms  
.   
Gwyn squared her shoulders and made sure her clothes were tidy.  
The inside bustled even more than the outside did. Dark wood paneling gleamed against brass everywhere. police had desks in the center of the floor. They might have been in orderly rows at one point, but now resembles a wasp nest. At either end of the long room were larger raised platforms. One held more desks guarding a large closed room, and the other platform held 3 big holding cells. The room was noisy with cops talking, younger girls and boys taking and delivering messages, and the complaints of a couple tough looking ladies from the holding cells.

Gwyn wasn't sure where to approach, so just went to the closest of the desks,   
"I'm looking for his Lord provost. He"

Without looking up the cop huffed, "beat it I'm busy."

"He's expecting me," Gwyn continued on as if she hadn't been interrupted.

"Then go waste his time, not mine" a sharp thumb jab indicated the large room opposite the holding cells.

"Thank you?" Gwyn offered but the words seemed lost in the bustle 

\----------------

She walked up to the room and knocked. some officers up here in the raised section weren't wearing their black and silver uniforms, but each had a silver badge against black leather somewhere on their belt or around their neck.  
They looked at her the way cats look at small bunnies.

She walked past them and knocked at the door of the room within a room.  
A thin man with a sharp widows peak opened the door to look out, "Himself didn't ask for you, so don't run up and intrude like."

Gwyn stuck a boot in the door before he could close it. Working in the palace had removed any fear of bureaucracy and irritated nobles,   
"Sir haMinch told me to report to my Lord Provost. I'm Gwyn of Haryse, page in training. I'm attempting to follow my training master's orders and report. Please advise me how I can do that."

"Wait until you are summoned. I said that before. Getcher boot off the wood less you want to polish it."

The door closed on Gwyn's "Thank you."

She was getting the impression cops are too busy for the common courtesies that were part of palace work.

Gwyn stood out of the way by the door. She settled into the parade rest Coran had taught her from his days in the city guard and watched the room.  
Most of the action was made up of upset people found cops to give statements to, cops frog marched other upset people to the holding cells.  
The officers all moved in pairs, she saw after a little while. the pairs would work independently, but when resting there were always two at a desk, or two holding up the wall with mugs of tea. One would talk to or control an upset person while the other one wrote in files with metal pens.

Half the messenger kids seemed to deal with these files, collecting and fetching them. The other half ran in and out of the building or delivered tea.

/Definitely wasps. Building a nest of paperwork./  
Gwyn decided she liked it here. it was so purposeful and busy.

The door to the office opened, and the man with a widows peak told a pair of un-uniformed officers to come inside. Gwyn went back to observing . She wished she had stopped for coffee.   
There seemed to be a hierarchy based on how much silver braid a uniform had. None of it approached how ornate the palace guard looked, but along the collars and cuffs there would be simple lines of braid, or here and there a small frog knot. The more lines, the higher up they were. But Gwyn was not sure where the knots came into play. 

The un-uniformed officers were higher up still, they would leave their dais and talk to uniforms, sending pairs to leave or deal with someone in and cell. 

The door opened again and the pair walked out back to their desk, full of momentum. Gwyn half wanted to follow them. she was sure they were going to important things.  
But the widows peak waved at her, "Haryse, cmon. Himself will see you." 

Polite niceties from Gwyn were ignored as she came through the door.

Inside was more dark wood paneling and brass. Gwyn had a moment of deja vu when she saw a bonsai on the corner of the desk; training master had one similar in the palace.

\----------------

The man behind the paper and file heavy desk wasn't thin as much as he was angular. pointed chin, pointed nose, cheekbones high and wide under fractal crows feet. His head was bald, but his eyebrows silver mixed with blond. Even they were angular, sharp slanted triangles. His neck and shoulders were solid, but without the thick muscle build that comes from wearing armor and fighting everyday. His hands were spider like and busy writing with a plain metal pen that matched the ones his officers used. However, his black uniform didn't have any silver braid. instead it had thin silver chain that draped over each shoulder. The chains were pinned in place with a royal crest to show his service to the crown.

He didn't look up from his work to address her,  
"Do you know why you are here?"

She would have expected the voice to be sharp and pointed like his appearance, but instead it was low, smooth, and almost hollow in its tone. Like a river rock was speaking.

"I've been told to report here by Sir haMinch because of a royal decision that I was responsible for some escapes of convicts last week, my lord."

"And," He passed a file to the man with a widows peak and continued, "what are you to do here?"

"I believe that is up to your discretion. It was explained that I was to understand the damage I caused, and make up for it, I I could, my lord."

He looked up at her for a moment, and Gwyn felt poleaxed. His eyes were a different blue than sir haMinch's, hazel with green, but the resemblance was still uncanny. Besides that, combined with the sharpness of his features, the blue seemed like an icicle. She felt positive he knew what she had had for lunch, and for dinner the night before.   
Gwyn felt suddenly giddy. The change in perspective changed his features from sharp to perfectly sculpted. He was utterly handsome.

"So what are you good for?" His tone still was hollow, almost bored. Gwyn waited for him to tell her. She was used to rhetorical questions from nobles at the palace.

"Speak up. if I ask a question, I expect it answered." 

She answered without weighing her words,  
"I can end fights, do tedious paperwork, prepare bodies for burial, and follow orders, sir"

There was a small spark of interest in the set of his face, and Gwyn suppressed a thrill. "Learned all that at the palace?"

"No sir. I learned some from my guard Coren, and got instruction at the temple of the Black God."  
He gathered some papers, giving her a break from his handsome face.   
"And why did you learn how to prepare the dead for burial? it is hardly a common skill for nobles of your blood."

"I survived a shipwreck, my lord. Everyone else, 42 others, didn't. None of them got real burials. There were prayers and ceremonies but..."   
Gwyn came to a stop. she wasn't sure how to explain how that lead to her asking to be able to assist the black gods priests.

"So you're still carrying it around. trying to appease your survivors guilt by cleaning strangers corpses."

Gwyn came back to the room with a blink.  
"That's part of it, yes sir."

"And the other parts?"  
Gwyn frowned and settled herself into the stiff posture of parade rest and fixed her gaze to a point above the back of the Provost's chair.

"That's a rather personal question, my lord. we haven't even been introduced yet."

"Rodriguez haMinch of Frasrlund.” he introduced himself with a heavy scanran accent, “And I know who you are. Go to the archives here at the station and find the records of who all escaped. Study them, you can't take the reports themselves out of the archive room, but can take notes. Send me a report of who left, where and how they were found, and how their escape affected the cases they were involved with. If you're still here after dinner, you can take part in drill with the evening watch. Ask detective hazlewood if you have any questions. but don't bother her. she's here to work and you are too."

Gwyn braced to attention, "Yes sir, thank you for your time."  
The man with a widow's peak, Gwyn still hadn't gotten his name, shooed her toward the door and then buscled out of the office after her. He handed the file off to one of the kid messengers, then pointed at a lady without a uniform that sat close by, "This is hazlewood."  
He was gone before she finished saying 'thank you' again. 

\---------------

Detective Hazlewood, a sharp eyed, dark skinned woman turned in her seat to look over her shoulder. She wore the face veil of the bazhir. The one she wore now was a black gauze with small silver stars embroidered along the hems. It draped down from behind her ears over the bridge of her nose, keeping her forehead and ears clear of cloth. Her dark hair was pinned back and gathered in a black scarf that matched her veil. Gwyn bowed as appropriate to a professional and temporary superior and approached.  
"Detective Hazlewood? I'm Gwyn, a page at the palace."

"Yes, Pen mentioned you would be coming by. haMinch assigned you to me then?" she sounded resigned, her voice clear and high, like chimes.   
/Pen... who?/ Gwyn decided to keep the question for later.

"I hope I won't be too much of a bother for you. mostly I just need to know where the archives here are, I'm to look up files and make a report."

"Oh, well, that's easy then. It's just past evidence. I'll show you."

"Thank you" the words finally seemed to land and make an impact, Hazlewood's eyes crinkled and Gwyn could see her rosebud mouth stretch in a smile,

"Polite one, arentcha?"

"We get wacked with sticks if we're rude up in the palace, detective. it's a hard habit to break."

"You can just call me Hazlewood, or Chisa, if you bring me coffee."

Gwyn's spirits lifted high, "There's coffee here? all I've seen is tea."

"Not unless I send someone for it special. They don't make it like they do down south either. It's very bland and bitter."

Gwyn chatted with her about coffee houses in town as they entered a hallway with a gated window labeled 'evidence' to a sturdy door with a brass sign reading archive. 

"Well," Gwyn said as she opened the door, "Let me know if you send out for coffee, I'll spring for the good stuff for you and anyone else who wants a cup."

"Now that's a dangerous offer. I hope your coffers run deep."

"Heh, they will if I buy and open a coffee shop by the precinct. I think that would be a great investment."

"What?” Hazlewood sputtered, “I know you're from the palace, so you're a noble, but you're also like, what, 16?"

"Fourteen, yeah, but I'm an only child of an old line. So, yeah, I think, maybe a coffee shop might be a great idea. I'll talk to my steward about it."

"Nobles. You all are nuts." They shared a grin.

Gwyn laughed and bowed, "You are very wise. And thank you for your time. I am serious about buying people coffee if they want some. Not to be showy and brainless about money like a noble. just, I really like coffee. It'd be nice to share the enjoyment with others."

Hazlewood shook her head and lightly punched her shoulder,  
"Try not to get lost in there. I'll send someone when kids come by with coffee."

"Thank you detective."

\---------

The archives didn't have a filing system to speak of. they were roughly in chronological order. but there wasn't a cross reference at all, or an index to look things up in. Just finding one of the records that mentioned someone escaping the holding cells took a half hour.

She sent one of the messengers out with a coin to get a bag of sweets and candies, and spent the next hour bribing a revolving hoard of kids to help her find all the records she needed. 

There were 8 escapees last weekend, but she had only found the records for 7 before her reinforcements were taken away. A detective scolded her and them for taking time away from their duties to the precinct.

After another half hour wading through the archives she gave up.

"Detective Hazlewood? Might there be a desk I can work at out of the way?" 

"Sure, you can share mine. My partner is down at the magistrates office for a while longer."

"Thank you. while I have you distracted, I heard there were 8 escapes last week, but I and a bunch of the messenger kids could only find 7 in the archives."

"Oh, is that what you're working on? it's cause the archives are for closed cases. the witness who left protective custody was part of an ongoing investigation. I've got the file here on Kaiser. Limen and I are the leads on that case."

"Oh. that would make sense why I am supposed to bother you if if have questions. smart Provost."

\-----------

Gwyn slipped into the world of paperwork to decipher handwritings and puzzle out the answers she needed from witness reports of the crimes, arrest records, and faint carbon copies of requisition reports.  
It was a different landscape from the reports and research and the palace. There wasn't any court language to soften how rough and tend gruesome the city can be. Descriptions were clinical and written for brevity and accuracy, not to sway opinion. 

It was harsh and sharp, like mountains in winter. It felt clean. Gwyn realized how much of the reports about the city she had read in the palace last year were softened. The reality was packaged and polished neatly, so the politicians can consider and weigh money and manpower against problems. It allowed the palace leeway to decide against fixing the problem right then, or prioritize other things instead. but the world of paperwork the cops had didn't pull any punches. Even reading the closed files made her want to help catch the criminals. 

Gwyn surfaced when she smelled coffee and grinned up at Hazlewood.   
"If being a knight doesn't work out for me, I'm going to be a cop. this is all fascinating. I feel really pumped up to get out there and make an difference."

"You're young yet. Rookies are always excited like that. We grind away at crime, but it grinds back."

The coffee was excellent, and Gwyn made sure that she paid for it.

\-------------

Back into the research Gwyn started to calculate how much damage she had caused with that out of control magic.  
A key witness had left protection and disappeared, presumed dead, which put a difficult case that much farther from being solved. Plus work hours and wounded cops recapturing a 2 murderers, a forger, 3 drunks, and an arsonist. 

It seemed impossible that something that had been a minutes worth of concern for her had caused all this additional work. She supposed that was the point of this punishment work. to realize the consequences often overshadow the act that caused them.

Someone prodded her shoulder again before she looked up from her growing stack of notes, "Hm? I mean, yes? Detective?" 

"It's about time for shift change. I'm going to be heading out after evening drill. You want to join?"

"Yes please. I've got more to do though, is it alright if I keep using your desk?" 

"Yeah sure. Detective Florence and Simmons use it in evening shift. just keep the Kaiser case file here, and the rest can go back in the archives."

"Great. So where is this drill? What is it?" Gwyn stood and stretched out her shoulders  
"Behind the building, it's fighting practice. haMinch has those who can drill before and after a shift." 

"It's so weird having a haMinch here too. I'm used to it being the training master and not the Provost."

"They're an big old family. The first Lord Provost was a haMinch too."

"Are they all handsome? It seems unfair for one family to have all the good looks."

The detective laughed like she made a joke, and didn’t answer.


End file.
